Nexans Announces $80 Million Expansion to Goose Creek Site, The only underwater cable manufacturing site in North America

Source: Post and Courier, By David Wren dwren@postandcourier.com

Nexans Goose Creek SC Plant

(June 20, 2018) A French company that builds high-voltage cables in Goose Creek for the power industry is adding underwater cables to the site’s product mix as part of an $80 million expansion.

Nexans, which opened its 350,000-square-foot plant in 2014 at the Charleston International Manufacturing Center, plans to add 125,000 square feet of space and double its workforce to roughly 135 employees over the next two years.

It also plans to build a shipping terminal at its site along the Cooper River, where the company’s cable-laying vessels can load up before heading to offshore projects. The underwater, or submarine, cable expansion is prompting Nexans to build a second ship

“Nexans is investing here because the submarine market is exploding — both in North America and globally,” said Brian Boan, director of transformation projects for Nexans’ plant in the Bushy Park area of Berkeley County.

The underwater power cable market is expected to grow from about $8 billion this year to more than $16 billion by 2023, according to industry researcher Markets-to-Markets.

The Goose Creek site will be Nexans’ only underwater cable manufacturing site in North America.

“The overall market is set to witness significant growth because of increasing offshore wind installations, growing demand for inter-country and island connections, and demand from the offshore oil & gas sectors,” the researcher said.

The Goose Creek site will be Nexans’ only underwater cable manufacturing site in North America. Currently, the company builds underwater power cables at its Calais, France, headquarters and at a plant in Halden, Norway. Nexans has other North American facilities that make fiber-optic cables, wiring for the construction industry, low-voltage cables and other products.

Production of underwater cable won’t be too different from the land-based power cables the company already makes at the Goose Creek plant. The process typically involves a copper conductor capable of handling up to 525 kilovolts being lowered into a 426-foot-tall tower where it is encased in melted plastic and then cured and cooled with nitrogen.

The land-based cables, which are used in underground power installations, are built in lengths that can stretch more than one mile. They are placed into drums and transported by trucks from the Nexans site to roughly 20 large customers that serve utilities nationwide. The Goose Creek plant builds about 60 miles of such cable each year, with 80 percent going to markets in North America.

The site plans to build up to 155 miles of underwater cable each year when manufacturing begins in 2020, serving markets around the globe as production ramps up to 24 hours a day.

“It’s a very slow manufacturing process — we’re not a widget environment,” Boan said, adding the tower process takes about one minute for every 3.3 feet of cable. “Every cable that comes out of this factory is a very specific design to a very specific customer and need. We never produce the same cable twice here.”

The expansion in Goose Creek comes at a difficult time for Nexans, which said last week that its full-year earnings would be weaker than expected because of an “abrupt deterioration of the high-voltage project activities forecast for the second half of 2018.” That includes postponements of some underwater cable projects and a weak backlog of land-based cable deals.

Nexans’ shares have lost nearly 30 percent of their value this year and Arnaud Poupart-Lafarge, the company’s CEO, unexpectedly announced he would leave the company by Sept. 30 for personal reasons. The high-voltage cable industry also is being challenged by growing competition from Chinese manufacturers.

The Goose Creek expansion is part of a long-range plan to diversify production of the underwater cables that Nexans sees as a future profit driver for the company.

“It’s a big commitment for Nexans, and it shows a lot of confidence in our facility, the Charleston area and our workforce,” Boan said. “We take pride in the fact that we’re using local resources as far as people and other businesses supporting us. It’s exciting to be a part of this community, and now to be stepping into the maritime and port industry that’s growing so fast here.”

Volvo car to be built at Berkeley County plant site unveiled

Source: Live5News

Volvo car to be built at Berkeley County plant site unveiled. Left to right: Berkeley County Deputy Supervisor Tim Callan and Les Blackenship, County Supervisor William Peagler, Economic Development Director Barry Jurs, and County Attorney John O. Williams

BERKELEY COUNTY, SC (June 20, 2018) – We’ve been hearing about it for years now, and finally, the Volvo Car manufacturing plant in Berkeley County is open for business.It’s the first Volvo plant ever in the United States.

On Wednesday, Volvo unveiled the redesigned S60 sports sedan that will be made at the Berkeley County plant.The atmosphere was like a New York high end fashion show, except most of the runway participants, were showing off their Volvo employee uniforms.

“On my line, we install the doors on every car that leaves this place,” a bodyshop employee said.”Volvo coming to South Carolina for me personally, it promotes growth in the Lowcountry as well as job security for myself and our futures.  I am proud to say I am from South Carolina.”

The cars will start rolling off the line in late August, early September of this year and once the plant is up to full capacity, they will be able to manufacture 50,000 of the cars every single year.

The head of the American division says the United States is definitely where Volvo needs to be expanding.

Volvo Cars is still hiring.

“Our American business is developing extremely well with strong growth. Sales this year are up 41 percent,” said U.S. CEO Anders Gustafsson.

In addition to the S60 car, the plant will also pump out the XC90 SUV, starting in a few years.That will put production at 150,000 vehicles a year, once at full capacity.

“Of course our idea with those cars is not only produce for the US, it’s to export. Half of the production will export,” said Javier Varela, SVP of Manufacturing & Logistics.

Volvo says it is proud to open its first auto manufacturing facility ever in the United States, bringing with it some 4,000 jobs right here to the Lowcountry. While Volvo is ready to roll, it’s still hiring and training. If you’re interested in opportunities available at the plant, be sure to click this link. 

The site is now ahead of its hiring schedule and in the pre-production phase for the S60, said Katarina Fjording, Volvo’s vice president of manufacturing and logistics for the Americas. The company plans to employ 2,000 people and head into full production of the S60 sedan by the end of the year.

Fjording managed the launch of the site, overseeing facility construction, supplier recruitment and hiring. She will transition into a new role, and Jeff Moore will run the site going forward.

Meet the people who made the #newS60 reveal so special. A car revealed by those who made it #MadeBySouthCarolina pic.twitter.com/WkIbeDvYAN

— Volvo Cars (@volvocars) June 21, 2018

This is the last piece of Volvo's lineup and it's a looker. pic.twitter.com/yrLYI5cxfb

— Roadshow (@roadshow) June 20, 2018

Read more from the Post and Courier and Charleston Regional Business Journal.

May 8, 2018 – Absolute Haitian Corp. is expanding operations in the United States with the construction of a new 116,000-square-foot facility in Moncks Corner, S.C., near Charleston.

The company declined to say how much it was investing in the new facility, but said the expansion is expected to create an estimated 45 jobs over the next few years.

“It definitely will be product dependent, so that might change,” spokeswoman Patrice Aylward said in a May 8 interview at the company’s booth.

Absolute Haitian, based in Worcester, Mass., is the exclusive sales and service partner for Chinese injection molding machinery maker Haitian Plastics Machinery Ltd. Machine sizes for Haitian presses range from 44-7,435 U.S. tons of clamping force.

The facility, which is expected to be completed in 2019, will house additional sales, applications, service and training functions as well as new capacity and capabilities for the assembly, testing and customer demonstrations of large tonnage injection molding machines and work cells, the company said.

Additionally, the facility will provide more space for stock machines to support Haitian product lines and customers in the United States and Canada.

“We have been really growing steadily with Haitian since we started partnering, which initiated in 2006,” Mike Ortolano, co-owner of Absolute Haitian, said in a booth interview. “We’ve gotten up to a critical mass where we feel like our ability to stock machines, to do more configuration than we do now, to be able to run off larger machines than we’re capable of doing in our existing facilities is really the driver there.”

Ortolano said the expansion is a “natural evolution” for the company and is partially driven by larger machines for markets such as automotive and appliances.

“The mid- to large-size machine business is probably more driving it than any particular market segment,” he added.

Growing automotive and manufacturing sectors in the southeast region of the U.S. as well as access to Charleston’s deep-water port were big factors for location selection, the company said.

“If you look at the distribution of large machines in the U.S., there actually is kind of a corridor that runs from the southeast up through the Michigan area,” Ortolano explained, calling the facility’s location in South Carolina the “sweet spot.”

“It’s a good location for us,” he said.

The facility is expected to be operational in 2019, Frohring added.

“The selection of the Charleston area was driven by many factors,” Absolute Haitian co-owner Nate Smith said. “These included expansion of the automotive and manufacturing sectors in the southeast region and access to Charleston’s deepwater port. Although other states in the region were considered, the State of South Carolina and the regional economic development groups made the selection an easy one.”

The South Carolina expansion comes quickly on the heels of a major infrastructure project at Absolute Haitian’s Worcester headquarters facility that is now completed. Haitian International recently completed expansions in Mexico with a grand opening of a technical support centre in Tijuana. Additional service centres in Mexico are in the planning stages.