Unilin Announces Plans for New Plant in North Caro

Thomasville, NC, Mar. 17--Unilin Décor's announcement yesterday that it will build a $80 million plant near Thomasville and create 330 jobs was taken by Davidson County leaders as a sign that a high-tech version of its manufacturing heritage can survive. "This is a red-letter day for the county, one of the biggest I can remember in a number of years," said Fred Sink, the chairman of the county board of commissioners. "There is light at the end of the tunnel and it's beginning to shine brighter now with this announcement." The company, which is based in Belgium, said it would build a 600,000-square-foot plant on 61 acres. The company makes glueless laminate flooring under the brand name Quick-Step, and has other operations in the area. The new plant is expected to be operational by spring 2005. The creation of 330 jobs paying an average wage of $16 an hour, plus keeping 57 existing jobs in Thomasville, was welcome news. The county has lost more than 2,300 furniture-manufacturing jobs since February 2002 and its unemployment rate was 7.9 percent in January. Unilin representatives and state and local government officials said that there's no question the $14 million in local and state tax incentives played a significant role in the decision. About $6.7 million will come from the city of Thomasville or county government. But what sealed the deal was the guarantee from Mary Rittling, the president of Davidson County Community College, that it would provide a trained workforce for the company. "We had about 20 people in our formal presentation (to Unilin) and we were doing fair when Dr. Rittling got up," said Steve Googe, the executive director of the Davidson County Economic Development Commission. "She really sold Davidson County Community College and the folks in Davidson County and their ability to be trained to the Unilin representatives." Rittling said that the community college is working closely with Unilin to upgrade existing courses and create new ones for the type of highly automated manufacturing that it will do at the plant. "Our goal is to not only meet Unilin's immediate employment needs, but always keep students in the pipeline learning the processes as the technology advances," Rittling said. It was easy for Unilin to justify a major U.S. expansion considering it has secured 17 major flooring distributors for its Quick-Step products in only three years, said Bart Stofferis, the general manager of the Quick-Step Inc. subsidiary. "The question was, where could we justify placing the new plant because we are going to use technology here that will be more advanced than what we use in Belgium?" Stofferis said. Tim Tipton, the marketing director for Quick-Step, said that the company became convinced "that the community college would not only be able to train workers for our immediate needs, but for the skills of the technology we have not developed yet." Gov. Mike Easley said that the state's $7.3 million in incentives was appropriate considering Unilin represents "the type company that we're after." About $1.9 million will come from the state's Job Development Investment Grant over ten years, while nearly $3 million in William S. Lee Act tax credits will go toward equipment purchases and work force training. "These are the type of high-skilled jobs that will require advanced educational training and can't be done overseas," Easley said. "Knowledge, talent and creativity are our competitive strength." Googe said that competing Lancaster County, SC and the state of South Carolina offered incentives approaching $30 million for the project. "We didn't have an incentives package like that, so clearly the decision for the company to locate the plant expansion here had to do with the community college and the labor force," Googe said.