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Delta manufacturing begins slow rebound after years of decline
From shopping to school, Cleveland makes it’s mark
BY EVA
ANN DORRIS
DBJ Contributing Writer
Greenville’s gain is the Delta’s gain. When
Textron Fastening Systems kicked its automotive fastener
making facility into production early this year, it set
in motion a manufacturing enterprise that will likely employ
500 people within the next six months.
“That and other locations will bring us back to levels
of employment before the crash of 2001 and 2002,”
said Tommy Hart, executive director of the Industrial Foundation
of Washington County.
One city’s rose garden is another’s bed of thorns.
“I’m not sure what the deal is,” Allen
McLain said. The member of the board of directors for Belzoni-Humphreys
Development Foundation can’t figure out what has happened
to manufacturing in his neck of the Delta - and he doesn’t
know what to do to bring it back.
“We stay in a recruitment mode. We have had active
campaigns to auto suppliers. We have the labor supply and
have conducted three series of workforce training.”
Belzoni’s manufacturing saga reads like a Greek tragedy,
loss after loss being the dominant theme: “Over the
past few years,” lamented McLain, “it’s
disappeared with the exception of catfish processing plants.”
Jockey Menswear closed, prompting the loss of 290 jobs primarily
held by women; Sherrill Enterprises cut-and-sew closed,
taking more than 60 jobs primarily held by women; and catfish
food maker Producers Feed closed, leaving 75 workers jobless.
But Belzoni may be the tail end of the closure trend. While
the manufacturing revival in the Delta isn’t a replay
of the California Gold Rush, there is activity stirring
down by the river.
“We sank and sank and sank but we’re coming
back,” said Robert Ingram executive director of the
Greenwood-Leflore-Carroll Economic Development Foundation.
“We have had a number of expansions at existing industries
in the last couple of years.”
Among them are Viking Range (cooking products), John Richard
Corp. (high-end home accessories) and Milwaukee Electric
Tool.
“We’ve purchased a building downtown for corporate
offices and remodeled one we already owned for product training,”
said Cary New, communications officer for Viking Range Corp.,
manufacturer of stoves and other products. New said the
company now employs 1,000; its most recent expansion was
an 80,000-square-foot addition to the cooking products line
completed in 2002.
While Ingram says manufacturing employment is down from
what it was five years ago, announcements of two new companies
expected in the next couple of months should lessen some
of that loss. The Milwaukee firm is also moving 50 of its
high-tech positions from its headquarters to Greenwood.
“We’re doing good but it’s going to take
a while to get back to peak,” said Ingram.
“I think manufacturing here in the Delta is much like
all over the country,” said Tim Climer, executive
director of the Indianola-based Sunflower County Economic
Development District. “We’re in transition from
production to distribution.
“I don’t believe manufacturing is dead but it
will always continue to evolve. That’s always been
true.”
Slightly more than a month into his Sunflower position,
Climer is getting a feel for what’s shaking and what’s
standing still in his Delta territory. The old Modern Line
Products 550,000-square-foot lawnmower manufacturing facility
that closed several years ago, for example, is empty: “We’re
trying to acquire the property,” said Climer.
A company moving into the facility would probably be something
new to the area, where catfish processing and distribution
centers (Dollar General and Super-Valu) outnumber firms
like clothing maker Ruleville Manufacturing Co. and food
processor Allen Canning, each of which employs 200 workers.
“The manufacturers are still there,” Climer
remarked. “They may just be making things Mississippi
is not used to. There continue to be challenges and opportunities.”
“We’ve got to be realistic about our expectations,”
said Leland Speed, executive director of Jackson-based Mississippi
Development Authority. “Manufacturing has been going
down in the Western world for 20 years.”
He cited the 60,000 manufacturing jobs lost in Mississippi
in the past decade but also pointed out that the state “has
at the same time picked up 100,000 service sector jobs.”
Speed said the old model that economic development equals
industrial growth is a relic: “The world has changed,
the old game is over.”
“At Entergy, we’re very optimistic about the
future of manufacturing in the Delta,” said Carolyn
Shanks, president and CEO for Entergy Mississippi. “The
economy is just starting to rebound, and the Delta has already
landed two major facilities in Faurecia and Textron. We
are developing plans that will not only help continue bringing
new facilities to the Delta, but will also help existing
industries - which is where most job growth occur grow and
expand.”
Jerry Fraiser has seen that happening in Yazoo City, where
he heads up the Yazoo County Chamber of Commerce: “We
just had one of our major employers announce a workforce
reduction.”
Yazoo Industries will cut 200 of its 300 workers by the
end of the summer; the firm makes wiring harnesses for Cadillacs
and Corvettes on contract with General Motors. The Corvette
wiring is going elsewhere, “probably south of the
border,” according to Fraiser.
He holds out hope that the company may pick up contracts
from other automotive manufacturers it is currently bidding
on.
Fraiser is hoping to lease a 30,000-square-foot facility
to one of “two different companies interested in the
building.” Nothing is signed yet, though, by either
firm, either of which would hire 50 workers.
Service-sector jobs, albeit an untraditional service sector,
are reason for optimism in Yazoo County, explained Fraiser:
“The one bright spot is we just completed construction
of a new medium-security federal prison that employs 30
people now and will eventually employ 300.”
“It’s nice to see something positive happening,”
declared Dean Morganti, economic development assistant for
Cleveland-Bolivar County Chamber of Commerce and Industrial
Development Foundation. She spoke of the recent purchase
of the old Royal Vendors 144,000-square-foot building in
Charles W. Dean Industrial Park by the French firm Faurecia.
The company, which employs 60,000 people in 27 countries,
will fabricate automobile seat frames, employing 250 when
it reaches peak production in 2006. Morganti said the company
does not have a contract with Nissan, Mississippi’s
first automobile manufacturer, at this time; it makes frames
for Ford, Volkswagen, General Motors and Chrysler cars.
She is particularly pleased that Faurecia’s 250 employees
will be a net gain of 100 more workers than the 150 employed
by Royal Vendors when it closed in 2001 after losing a vending-machine
contract with Coca-Cola.
Another industry, AMPCO metal products with 100 employees,
closed 18 months ago but “the building is about to
be occupied by a component-housing manufacturer,”
Morganti said, employing 50-80.
“It’s a mixed bag,” commented Ron Hudson,
executive director of Clarksdale-Coahoma County Chamber
of Commerce and Industrial Foundation. He pointed to the
move to North Carolina in December of Corbin Ruswin, manufacturer
of door closures, that employed 60 and had been a fixture
in the Delta city for 50 years.
The good side is that Hudson has “a good prospect”
for the 153,000-square-foot building Corbin left. The potential
taker would employ more than 100 people, resulting in a
net gain of jobs.
Hudson said another large employer in the county is “looking
at a pretty sizable expansion but other companies are just
holding on.”
“There are a lot of things working against manufacturing
in the United States and Mississippi,” Hudson said.
“People are having to change strategies of how they
operate. It’s that the world is changing.”
Frank Howell knows that, but the director of the 18-county
Delta Council Department of Regional Economic Development,
based in Stoneville, feels it’s not nearly time to
throw in the towel.
“The manufacturing economy in the region took a serious
blow, however,” he explained, “we have a number
of superior existing industries who have chosen to stay
and are now indicating a strong recovery, adding jobs and
dusting off expansion plans.”
“There have been some very positive developments in
the area,” said Jay Moon, president of the Mississippi
Manufacturers Association in Jackson, particularly pointing
to Textron and Faurecia. “But, while these are very
positive developments for the Delta, manufacturing still
has challenges.”
Among the challenges faced by 2,200 MMA members, Moon lists
unregulated foreign competition, health care costs, energy
costs and tort reform as being significant conditions detrimental
to future growth.
Belzoni’s McLain would just like to have the companies
to deal with those challenges. He said Humphreys County’s
Heart of the Delta Industrial Park has 30 available lots
and buildings. McLain hopes the vacancies are soon filled
but he and his colleagues are being forced to try new strategies
to reach that goal.
“We ran ads in Expansion Management Magazine for three
years,” he recalled. “We didn’t get replies
like we should have.
“We have kept in constant touch with development authorities.
“We are holding a strategic planning program run by
a Delta State University professor.
“But we haven’t been successful enough in filling
our manufacturing buildings to try only that. We need a
broad base of economic development,” McLain said,
pointing to Belzoni’s growing quest to bring tourists
to the town, which bills itself as the Catfish Capital of
the World.
“If I knew the answers, we could fill up the four
million square feet of manufacturing space available in
the Delta.” DBJ
