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Floquip expanding Midway operation
Subsidiary of Liberty's largest private employer growing
Floquip contractorweb
A Coastal Industrial Company LLC contractor cuts material to be used in polymer-feed equipment manufactured by Floquip in Midway Industrial Park. - photo by Photo provided.

SNF Floquip has announced it will double its Midway Industrial Park plant, investing about $7 million in the expansion.

Floquip is a subsidiary of Liberty County’s largest employer, SNF Holding, which also operates what is known as Chemtall in Riceboro. The company’s announcement says the expansion will increase employment by about 35 percent. Floquip now employs about 130 people, but only 50 are directly with Floquip. The rest are considered contractors.

Company officials say the expansion is being promoted by advancements in the North American energy. 

“We can’t hire fast enough, and we can’t build fast enough,” manager of manufacturing John Rankin said.

SNF’s Riceboro plant makes polymers used to clear solids out of water. Floquip makes equipment to apply those polymers.

The new, 160,000-square-foot facility will be sixteen times larger than the 10,000-square-foot building in Riceboro, where the company launched with about 15 employees in the early 1990s. In November 2011, the facility moved to its current 80,000 square-foot shop in Midway.

“You’d have never imagined five years ago that going from 10,000 to 80,000 wouldn’t meet our needs,” Rankin said.

SNF Holding is headquartered in France. It is a privately-owned, $2.6 billion company. Rankin said the company is making $1 billion in global business investments. Overall, SNF’s business has grown about 15 percent each year, and Rankin anticipates about a 35 percent employment growth in Floquip’s future.

During a recent Liberty County Development Authority meeting, SNF mining business director Kirk Thomas, “The driving force for getting our polymers out into the field is via the equipment in lots of cases. Having the equipment enables us to be a full service provider, not only of the chemical, but also of the means in which to use the chemical.”

The equipment is used in an array of markets, including municipal wastewater treatment, agriculture and turf management, mining and Canadian oil sands.

Enhanced-oil recovery in Canada’s Alberta Province is one of the company’s largest markets, and Thomas says the North American oil sands industry is rapidly growing.

“In a lot of these applications, we’re not involved in extracting the end-use product,” Rankin said. “We’re there to help clean up the waste, so it’s good for the environment.”

Rankin said the increased production benefits vendors, such as Georgia Iron Works in Macon. Contractors that provide the 80 workers at the plant include Coastal Industrial Company LLC, Universal Electrical Company and Daybreak Industrial. They provide welding, pipe fitting and fabrication at the shop.

Rankin attributes the business’s prosperity not only to global growth, but also to Liberty County’s workforce, collaborative business atmosphere, and training opportunities provided through Savannah Technical College.  

“I’m a vet myself, and I like the close proximity to Fort Stewart and to the departing military. It’s a good resource for us to have,” Rankin said.

“There are lots of positive to being in Liberty County,” Thomas said. “We’ve benefitted from our involvement with the Liberty County Development Authority, especially giving us recognition for the International Business of the Year award; the ties to World Trade Center and its international trade and export resources...”

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Record April boosts Savannah's container trade at port
GardenCityTerminal
The Port of Savannah moved 356,700 20-foot equivalent container units in April, an increase of 7.1 percent. - photo by Provided

The Georgia Ports Authority's busiest April ever pushed its fiscal year-to-date totals to more than 3.4 million 20-foot equivalent container units (TEUs), an increase of 8.8 percent, or 280,000 TEUs, compared to the first 10 months of fiscal 2017.

"We're on track to move more than 300,000 TEUs in every month of the fiscal year, which will be a first for the authority," said GPA Executive Director Griff Lynch. "We're also anticipating this to be the first fiscal year for the Port of Savannah to handle more than 4 million TEUs."

April volumes reached 356,700 20-foot equivalent container units, up 7.1 percent or 23,700 units. As the fastest growing containerport in the nation, the Port of Savannah has achieved a compound annual growth rate of more than 5 percent a year over the past decade.

"As reported in the recent economic impact study by UGA's Terry College of Business, trade through Georgia's deepwater ports translates into jobs, higher incomes and greater productivity," said GPA Board Chairman Jimmy Allgood. "In every region of Georgia, employers rely on the ports of Savannah and Brunswick to help them become more competitive on the global stage."

To strengthen the Port of Savannah's ability to support the state's future economic growth, the GPA Board approved $66 million in terminal upgrades, including $24 million for the purchase of 10 additional rubber-tired gantry cranes.  

"The authority is committed to building additional capacity ahead of demand to ensure the Port of Savannah remains a trusted link in the supply chain serving Georgia and the Southeast," Lynch said.

The crane purchase will bring the fleet at Garden City Terminal to 156 RTGs. The new cranes will support three new container rows, which the board approved in March. The additional container rows will increase annual capacity at the Port of Savannah by 150,000 TEUs.

The RTGs will work over stacks that are five containers high and six deep, with a truck lane running alongside the stacks. Capable of running on electricity, the cranes will have a lift capacity of 50 metric tons.

The cranes will arrive in two batches of five in the first and second quarters of calendar year 2019.

 Also at Monday's meeting, the GPA Board elected its officers, with Jimmy Allgood as chairman, Will McKnight taking the position of vice chairman and Joel Wooten elected as the next secretary/treasurer.

For more information, visit gaports.com, or contact GPA Senior Director of Corporate Communications Robert Morris at (912) 964-3855 or rmorris@gaports.com.

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