Wilbert Plastics Services plans to expand its Belmont manufacturing facility and move its corporate headquarters here from the Chicago area, making a $5.7 million investment locally and bringing 41 jobs with them, Gaston County and company officials announced Wednesday.
Salaries will vary by position, but average pay for a job at the headquarters will be $94,257, not including benefits, according to Gov. Bev Perdue’s office. That’s three times the average wage in Gaston County, which is currently $33,384.
However, some of the new positions are already filled by a management team relocating to Belmont, said Wilbert Plastics CEO Greg Botner during a reception at Cramer Mountain Country Club. Botner estimated that the company will hire 10 to 12 new people from the area.
“It’s a combination of transferees and new hires,” Botner said. “It’s probably 10 to 12 new hires, but that’s just a guess. I hope it’s 25 to 30 new people, but that all depends on the volume of our business.”
Gaston County’s relationship with Wilbert Plastics goes back to 1997, when the company built a new plant manufacturing thermoformed plastic parts in the Oaks Commerce Center at Montcross in Belmont. Thermoforming is a method of making plastic parts — sometimes large plastic parts like a pick-up truck bed liner — by preheating the plastic, bringing it in contact with a mold and then shaping it using a vacuum, pressure or mechanical force.
Wilbert Plastics Services has no immediate plans to build new office space to house its headquarters, Botner said. The company will be leasing space in the Cross Automation building at 2001 Oaks Parkway. That “class A” office space has been on the market since last summer, following Cross Automation’s decision to consolidate its warehousing in Greensboro and downsize its workforce in the weak economy.
Current plans call for the company to double the size of the Belmont facility, adding not less than 100,000 square feet, Botner said. The Belmont plant employs 86 people. The company also operates 50,000 square feet of warehouse space off-site in Gaston County and another facility in Harrisburg that employs 90 people.
Those two North Carolina plants had around 400 employees two years ago, Botner said, indicating the economic toll of the recession on Wilbert’s production.
In terms of initial job creation, Wilbert’s relocation is a drop in the bucket compared to the thousands of jobs that have been lost in Gaston County in recent months. But the relocation is a textbook example of the type of economic development that Gaston County is seeking, said Donny Hicks, director of the Gaston County Economic Development Commission, and Belmont Mayor Richard Boyce.
“It’s not a huge announcement, but it fits right in with our long-term plan,” Boyce said. “This is a day of good news and good hope.”
Charlotte real estate consultant Frank Warren released a study a year ago that said the Montcross area is the best shot Gaston County has to develop a market for class A office space. Montcross includes more than 1,100 acres along I-85 between exits 26 and 27, in large parcels with close proximity to I-485 and the international airport.
By attracting a corporate headquarters to Montcross, Gaston County opens its doors to development of more office buildings and executive housing, Hicks said.
For its investment, Wilbert will receive an $82,000 grant from the One North Carolina Fund, property tax credits from Belmont and Gaston County, and could qualify for other corporate incentives from the state based on job creation and other criteria.
Wilbert Plastics has been located in Chicago for 110 years, so moving was not an easy decision, Botner said.
North Carolina’s cash incentives were not as “robust” as some other locations, Botner explained, but the company selected Belmont for other reasons, including close proximity to manufacturing operations in the southeastern United States, access to Charlotte-Douglas International Airport, Belmont’s quality of life, low labor costs, workforce development at Gaston College and its working relationship with Donny Hicks and other Gaston County leaders.
Hicks was “the glue who pulled all of this together,” Botner said.
“The desire to have us here was expressed many times,” he said.
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