The site that would eventually become the Ontex factory in Stokesdale was the very last one the Belgium company considered when looking to have its first new production facility in the United States, company North American General Manager Jim Skinner said at ceremonies celebrating the plant’s opening Wednesday.
The maker of diapers and similar personal-hygiene products had entered the U.S. market through the acquisition of a Mexican company that served the West Coast from a factory near Tiajuana. Ontex had bought another American company, but wanted to build a factory from scratch.
Ontex looked all the way from northern Mexico to Ohio, then focused on Georgia and the Carolinas and eventually settled on North Carolina, Skinner told an audience gathered inside the cavernous industrial space to commemorate the facility’s spring opening. They’d considered 100 sites and actually visited 30.
"And we had this crazy meeting that our friends at CBRE put together with this company called Carroll Companies, and it was a last minute, ‘Hey, OK, we'll take a look at this.' Well, this was one of those things where a presentation was made, we saw some charts, we met some people. And it grew on us.”
The 250,000-square-foot facility at South Rockingham Industrial Park began operations in the spring and has about 100 people working there now, but the company hopes to quadruple that, CEO Esther Berrozpe said in a brief presentation in the main factory space of the 176,000-square-foot facility at the southwest corner of N.C. 65 and Interstate 73.
“When making this investment decision, North Carolina was an obvious choice for Ontex,” Berrozpe said. "Nearly half of the US population lives within 650 miles of this location. And these plants provide us a complementary supply-chain footprint across North America.”
In a brief interview after the event, Skinner said Ontex faces common current supply-chain challenges but is looking for opportunities to work with closer suppliers, such as for the non-woven materials Ontex uses.
On the workforce front, tough roles to recruit for include process engineering. “You saw the equipment. It’s not a paper mill, but it’s still a complex piece of equipment,” Skinner said.
The building includes not only the factory floor, where two manufacturing lines are installed with room for more, but also raw-materials storage and shipping space. The building site has room to essentially double the current footprint, he added.
“We have pretty ambitious growth plans over the next several years," Skinner said. "I would love nothing more than to put the pressure on the facility to to have to expand.”
Wednesday's event featured displays showcasing diapers Ontex makes in Stokesdale as store brands for Wal-Mart and Kroger supermarkets. The company also manufactures for some lifestyle brands, such as The Honest Company.
The Rockingham County Ontex project is a build-to-suit lease-back arrangement, Evan Stone, vice president of industrial business development for the Carroll Companies of Greensboro, told the TBJ.
Involved companies included McMillan Pazdan Smith Architecture, Choate Construction as the general contractor, site engineering by Timmons Group, and grading by Yates Construction. CBRE was the broker tenant representative.
The Economic Development Partnership of North Carolina and Rockingham County’s economic development department were involved, and the Golden Leaf Foundation arranged funding toward extending water and waste water to the site.
Ontex was awarded a $3 million Job Development Investment Grant, amortized over 12 years, from the N.C. Department of Commerce. Over the life of the grant, Ontex’s operations are projected to generate $30.3 million in state tax revenue. When it was announced, the company said the average salary for the new jobs will be $40,130.
Ontex is the first occupant in The Carroll Company’s South Rockingham Industrial Park. Stone said it consists of about 300 acres, with 240 unspoken-for, including room for a building of 1 million square feet. Across N.C. 65 from Ontex is a 176,000-square-foot spec building expected to be completed in a few weeks.
Carroll promotes it as having excellent road infrastructure, proximity to PTI Airport, a relatively low cost of business with low property taxes, and a strong work force, Stone said.
"We've got a ready workforce in that you're 15 minutes north of Greensboro, Greensboro airport. But you're also got some of Southern Virginia that can really access their workforce — Martinsville, Danville, that area. Yep. We know that people drive up to reasonably an hour and a half for a good job with benefits. And so we think this is a really prime area.”
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