New companies set sights on Summerville

Two companies that work with wood are investing more than $10 million and bringing about 110 new jobs to the Summerville area.

ECMD Inc. and International Transloaders are building distribution centers and light manufacturing facilities on adjacent properties on Jedburg Road.

When North Wilkesboro, N.C.-based ECMD first set up shop in the Lowcountry about three years ago, it anticipated having to expand the operation.

That time has come. ECMD said this week that four of its subsidiaries will share space in its 250,000-square-foot facility, which is more than half completed.

The company, which will make wood moldings, stair components and other building products in the new facility, plans to increase its existing payroll by 72 jobs over five years, ECMD said.

“We have been successful in building our business using a small, leased facility in Dorchester County,” Allen Dyer, president, said in a statement Thursday. “The new Jedburg Road plant will give us the opportunity to grow our markets and provide a higher level of service to our customers.”

International Transloaders, a startup business based in Calhoun County, is building a 100,000-square-foot distribution center on about 10 acres directly behind the ECMD facility. It hopes to open by June and plans to hire 40 workers over the next five years.

Lumber executive Tim Ellis, president of International Transloaders, said the company picked the Jedburg Road site to be close to the Port of Charleston.

“Globalization has everything to do with it,” he said in an interview this month.

Ellis said the company is targeting international businesses that import or export wood and wood products. It will load, unload, store and reship goods, and will offer “value-added” processing services, such as applying special coatings and bar codes.

Also, Ellis said, customers will be able to inspect their inventory in real time by logging onto the Internet.

“Our offering is going to grease the skids between Point A and Point B. … We’ll be a conduit for getting goods to market,” he said.

While they’ll be close neighbors, ECMD and International Transloaders won’t necessarily work directly with each other, Ellis said.

“But what we’ll be doing may be complementary to what they do,” he said.

Dorchester County is extending water and sewer lines to the properties, funded partly by a $10,000 grant from BellSouth Corp. Berkeley Electric Cooperative also donated money toward the water and sewer extension, but the amount was not publicized Thursday. The total cost of the project had not been finalized, said Jim Friar, Dorchester County’s economic development director.

Several hundred other new jobs are expected to come to the Jedburg Road area.

Fruit of the Loom, a unit of legendary investor Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway empire, will require about 275 workers at a Berkeley County distribution center it is planning for an undisclosed site along Interstate 26 near Jedburg.

This month, Summerville Preferred Providers said it is investing $2.2 million and hiring up to 100 workers to make heavy-duty truck frames for the American LaFrance vehicle assembly plant in North Charleston.

Also, Summerville-based automotive parts maker Williams Technologies, which had 500 workers when it was bought by Caterpillar Inc. this year, is expanding thanks to a new contract. As a result, it has transferred an unspecified number of existing employees to McQueen Industrial Park, where it is leasing about 210,000 square feet of the former Corning Cable plant and is planning to add to its payroll, a spokesman said earlier this month.