$6 million Caraustar production facility under construction

Ground was recently broken for a new production facility in Oregon, Ohio. The facility is being built for Caraustar, a manufacturer of paper tubes and cores. The company is headquartered in Fort Mill, South Carolina. The new manufacturing plant will occupy approximately 60,000 square feet of space.

Caraustar currently operates a plant in the Ampoint Industrial Park. The Ampoint facility has approximately 40,000 square feet of manufacturing space and 20,000 square feet of office space.

Caraustar is installing new equipment and needs a different building configuration and additional space for its operations. The company currently has 18 employees at the Ampoint plant.

As a result of this expansion, the plant is being set up to double its output. It has been estimated that the number of employees will increase to 50 as the plant reaches this higher production level. All of the employees at the Ampoint production facility will move to the new Oregon plant.

"A great deal of support was provided by economic development officials in Oregon," stated Jim Armstrong, Jr., plant manager for Caraustar. "If it hadn't been for Dean Monske with Oregon Economic Development and Ed Harmon at Spartan, this plant would have been moved outside of this area."

The new facility will be located at 4141 Spartan Drive in Orekon. It will be on a 32 acre site in the Cedar Point Development Park owned by Spartan Warehousing & Distribution, Inc. The new building will be owned by Spartan and leased to Caraustar. Hyde Development is the general contractor for this project.

Approximately $6 million is being invested in this project. This figure includes the cost of the land, the new manufacturing building, and the new production equipment to be installed. Caraustar will manufacture a number of tube products at its new production facility. It will service a range of customers in several industries. Customers include auto-related companies, forest products manufacturers, and manufacturers of fiberglass materials.

According to Jim Howell, president of Hyde Development, there are two buildings currently at this site. One is a 100,000 square foot industrial facility and the other is approximately 80,000 square feet. Caraustar's building will be the third structure in this complex. Oregon officials advise that there are plans and acreage at the Spartan complex to accommodate three additional facilities.

The new facility is in Cedar Point Development Park's foreign trade zone. Designation as a foreign trade zone, which occurred last summer, has provided this industrial park with a number of key benefits and incentives. A foreign trade zone is considered to be outside of US Custom's authority. As a result, duty is eliminated on re-exported product and scrap material. In addition, there is a reduction of duties on component parts and postponed duties on goods used for domestic consumption. In some states, all or a part of the state's inventory tax may be exempted from products manufactured in a foreign trade zone.

Designation as a foreign trade zone for the Cedar Point Development Park has provided key incentives to manufacturers who import component parts or who reexport products. The new Caraustar plant will export products to customers in Italy, Canada, and Mexico. It will import production materials from Canada.

Caraustar, a recycled packaging company, is one of the largest manufacturers and converters of recycled paperboard and recycled packaging products in the country. Caraustar is the nation's second largest manufacturer of convolute-wound and spiral-wound paper tubes and cores, according to the company. Caraustar is the largest supplier of gypsum facing paper in North America. Caraustar's product line includes recycled paperboard, tubes, cores and composite containers, cartons and custom packaging, recovered paper recycling, injection molded and extruded plastic products, and adhesives. The company has grown to over $1 billion in sales and over 6,500 employees. Caraustar operates 123 facilities located in 30 states, Canada, Mexico, and Great Britain. These plants include 22 manufacturing facilities for recycled paperboard, gypsum wallboard, plastics, and adhesives. Caraustar operates 97-converting facilities that manufacture paper tubes, cones, folding cartons, composite containers, and specialized industrial packaging.