Sumter Packaging Expanding

March 13, 2011

One local company is adding another facility in hopes of benefiting from the arrival of Boeing Co. in Charleston.

Sumter Packaging Corp., a manufacturer of corrugated items for industrial corporations in South Carolina, North Carolina and Georgia, finalized a deal in January to invest in an 80,000-square-foot facility locally, according to company president Ben DeSollar.

DeSollar said Sumter Packaging will expand into the building formerly occupied by Midwest Stamping Co., which closed in 2008 because of the recession. DeSollar said the move will increase the company’s footprint by 50 percent, bringing Sumter Packaging’s total square footage in the Carolinas to 240,000 square feet. The added facility will be up and running around July, but there will be further improvements as it is being used, DeSollar said.

“This is a huge move for us,” he said. “This will not only give us additional space for the contract packaging center and graphics center, it will also allow us space in our existing facilities to invest in machinery that will further enhance our quality and our printing capabilities.”

DeSollar added the new plant will be used to provide high graphics, contract packaging and as a warehousing center. DeSollar said between the new machinery and the purchase of the building, Sumter Packaging Corp. will invest more than a million dollars into the project.

“High graphics is an exciting area for us because it expands what we can do for our customers,” DeSollar said. “We always have been about quality, and we are very good about producing products that work for people on the operating level of our customers - the people that actually use the packaging. This would allow us to take our graphics capabilities up a notch because it gives us the room to expand with better machinery.”

“This is really great news for Sumter,” said Jay Schwedler, president of the Sumter Development Board.

“We are thrilled to again see another sign of the economy beginning to heal,” Schwedler said. “Their confidence and decision to expand and invest and ultimately hire more Sumter citizens is a testament to the community and its people. They had opportunities to place their confidence, jobs and dollars elsewhere but they chose Sumter, and we greatly appreciate that decision.”

Sumter Packaging’s new facility could benefit from increased business from the direct and indirect suppliers that Boeing will bring to South Carolina, DeSollar said. He added that Boeing will probably have a greater economic impact on South Carolina than BMW had on the Upstate, which has been a tremendous asset to South Carolina.

“That piggyback effect from other companies, relying on Boeing’s research can far exceed even the impact that Boeing and its suppliers will have on the state’s growth. And the type of companies that it brings in will be the type of small- and medium-size companies which are the job creators. And hopefully they will buy a lot of boxes and packaging materials as well.”

Sumter Packaging initially looked into expanding in 2001; however, the recession kept those plans from happening. DeSollar said the company still wasn’t in a good position to do it in 2008. With annual sales of more than $20 million, he explained the business is better economically than it was three years ago.

“We, like everyone else, had a dip in 2008. Since then, we have closed a lot of that gap,” DeSollar said. “We still haven’t caught up with 2008 sales yet. But we are doing reasonably well, and hopefully this expansion will allow us to go beyond where we were before the recession.”

(This article re-printed here with permission from The Item. For more info, visit www.theitem.com.)