Company to buy Duplin shell building
By Bonnie Edwards
Published in News on October 27, 2004 2:01 PM
KENANSVILLE -- Precision Hydraulic Cylinders has outgrown its plant in Beulaville and will send part of its operations to Duplin County's shell building in Wallace. And the county commissioners plan to help.
The commissioners held a special meeting Tuesday to set public hearings for 9 a.m. and 9:15 a.m. on Nov. 8 in the county administration building on Seminary Street in Kenansville.
The public hearing at 9 a.m. will be on the county selling five acres at South Park industrial park to the company for $5,000.
The hearing at 9:15 a.m. will be about the county lending $200,000 to the company at 3 percent interest over 12 years to prepare the shell building.
In April, Chris Barclay of Precision Hydraulic Cylinders approached Duplin Economic Development Director Woody Brinson about outgrowing the space he had at his plant in Beulaville.
The company plans to buy the shell building from the Wallace Committee of 100 and enlarge it.
The private, nonprofit Committee of 100 has the shell and five acres in Lot One of South Park. Duplin County owns another five acres, Lot Two.
Word got out in Beulaville that the company might move, and the town wanted the plant to stay.
The company's solution is to split up operations. A part stays in Beulaville, and another part, which actually supplies the first part, moves to Wallace. The company plans to invest $500,000 in the Beulaville plant and another $1.5 million in Wallace.
"We're trying to make sure 120 good-paying jobs stay in Duplin County," said Brinson. He said the shell building can be renovated and in operation by the first of the year. "It gives us a three- to six-month jumpstart."
The company had employed 80 people in Duplin until a plant in the United Kingdom burned. That bumped employment up to 150 at one time. Now, the plant employees 120 people.