Benefits of locating your manufacturing or industrial operations in Rutherford County include:
- Central location to move product along the east coast
- Large labor draw of highly skilled employees (approx. 320,000 within an hour’s drive)
- Low cost, reliable utilities
- Located within an hour’s drive of 3 major airports
- Customized training at local community college
While we are committed to exploring new market opportunities that fit within the topography, labor, and demographics of our area, Rutherford County is currently pursuing the following target markets:
The automotive industry has seen positive growth since its financial bailout. Low operating costs, an experienced labor pool, and the County's proximity to BMW, Freightliner and others are all factors that make Automotive Suppliers a target market for Rutherford County.
Several of these suppliers are already located in Rutherford County and include CMI Enterprises, Meritor, Timken, and Wilbert Plastics.
This target sector covers a broad group of producers which make raw materials and parts for a number of industry sectors including: energy, aerospace, biomaterials, medical devices and automotive. The County’s infrastructure is particularly useful for large heavy process projects in these sectors such as metals, chemicals, plastics, some paper and machinery. Electrical capability and costs, air attainment, Broad River capabilities, proximity to two international airports, and the availability of a few rail-served sites are key assets Rutherford County can offer the Advanced Materials market.
Rutherford County has existing clusters in the metals and plastics sector of advanced materials. Existing industries in the sector include Alliance Precision Plastics, Horsehead, and Trelleborg.
Rutherford County has an extremely valuable confluence of infrastructure for this industry and is one of a handful of possible locations in the Atlanta to Washington, DC corridor between internet hubs. With the electrical capability and cost, fiber capability, property tax costs, and training opportunities available, Rutherford County is well suited for the Data Center market.
Existing industries in this sector located within the County include Facebook and the NC Data Center; Google, Apple and 11 others operate elsewhere in NC.
Since locating in Rutherford County, Facebook and Isothermal Community College have partnered to create the Data Center Institute. An article about the Data Center Institute was featured in the January 2015 Issue of Site Selection Magazine.
These are facilities that have a large number of people on the phone/internet who take inquiries (inbound customer service) or make inquiries (outbound telemarketing), and other face-to-the-customer operations. Call Centers may be a direct sales tool, include a technical service component or be a combination of both. They may also include a fulfillment component that receives goods back from the customer and repairs and/or repackages products. According to the National Association of Call Centers, there are 66,000 call centers in the US today employing over 3.5 million people, and growing. For a time in the past, US companies outsourced this function to other countries. However, customer outcry over difficulties understanding foreign English accents and the increasing costs of labor overseas have brought many of these facilities back to the US. With the same fiber infrastructure needs as data centers, Rutherford County is also well suited for the Call Center market.
Existing call center operations located in Rutherford County include Ameridial.