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Sonoco to open larger facility
By Dan McCue
Staff Writer
Sonoco, the $3.7 billion global manufacturer of industrial and consumer packaging products based in Hartsville, has relocated its local recycling operation to 2025 Tellico Road in North Charleston.
Roger Schrum, a spokesman for the company, said the move and $1 million investment in a new facility on a portion of the former Macalloy industrial site on Shipyard Creek capped a two-year search for a site in the area after the company found it was rapidly outgrowing its former facility at 20 Braswell St. in Charleston.
“Given the size of the new location—we have a 30,000-square-foot building on a five-acre site, compared to the 1.8 acres we used to be located on—we believe we’ll have a much more efficient operation,” Schrum said.
The company employs eight full-time staffers and will hire additional temporary workers as its needs warrant, he said.
Myles Cohen, vice president and general manager of Sonoco Recycling, the Sonoco business unit formerly known as Paper Stock Dealers, said the additional space and improved productivity “will allow us to process and warehouse a larger volume of recyclables than we’ve been able to handle in the past. This new capability will benefit the community and our company through increased environmental sustainability.”
Sonoco’s new facility will accept and process most corrugated boxes and other grades of paper materials, metals and plastics, and will have an annual recycling capability of approximately 250 million pounds of recyclable materials.
Despite Sonoco’s having 46 other facilities spread across the United States and Canada, the company never considered moving the recycling plant outside of the Charleston region, Schrum said.
“Because of its proximity to the Port of Charleston, it’s a strategic location for us,” he said.
While much of the recycled material is transported to other Sonoco facilities in the state to be turned into new consumer and industrial packaging, about 20,000 tons of it is exported to China each year to be used in packaging there, Schrum explained.
“Believe it or not, recycled paper material is the United States’ largest export product,” he said.
The new facility, Cohen said, expands Sonoco’s capability to export recovered paper to Asia and India.
While space was a primary consideration driving the move, the redevelopment of Braswell Street was another.
Last year, an investment group that includes developer Robert Clement III and North Carolina-based Cherokee Partners bought Sonoco’s former site for $2.8 million.
The building will soon be razed as part of ongoing preparations for the investment group’s Magnolia development.
Dan McCue is a staff writer for the Business Journal. E-mail him at dmccue@setcommedia.com.
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