Broken Arrow, Okla.-based stretch film extruder Paragon Films Inc. will invest about $10 million to build a 40,000-square-foot facility in Taylorsville, N.C., that will include a warehouse and production area.
Taylorsville is ideal for Paragon due to its rail and interstate accessibility, officials said.
``We have a large number of customers on the East Coast. Our raw materials come in by rail and we export our product by road, so the site needed to be near both,'' Paul Gill, vice president of sales and marketing, said in a telephone interview.
Paragon looked at locations in North and South Carolina before settling in Alexander County.
The new site is to begin production with one line in late October. Gill said Paragon plans to install a second line quickly.
``Ultimately, there may be as many as five to seven lines in the next three years,'' he said. At least three, he said, will be cast extrusion lines; others will have ``some blown capacity.''
The company will hire 25 employees immediately, and Gill said there could be as many as 50 in the next three years.
Expansion plans are elastic and based on production. The company has an option on 15 acres next to the plant.
``We have options for land purchase or land grants, depending on how and when we expand,'' President and Chief Executive Officer Mike Baab said.
The plant will be Paragon's second. The polyethylene film manufacturer reported 2004 sales of $70 million.
Paragon is receiving county and state tax incentives. The state incentives are based on a trifecta of qualifiers that measure Paragon's financial investment, the number of jobs produced and the pay scale of those jobs, said David Eisenhower, county economic development director.
The county assured Paragon that the company will have free access to the railroad, even though that entails building 2,700 feet of tracks at no cost to Paragon, Eisenhower said.
