Greenville News, SC
By Rudolph Bell • BUSINESS WRITER • December 31, 2014
Companies eligible for aid to pay for upgrades to their plants and equipment
South Carolina textile companies are eligible to tap the U.S. Treasury to pay for upgrades to their plants and equipment under a federal program just beginning to roll out.
Advertisement
The program — created under the 2014 farm bill — authorizes the Agriculture Department to give cotton mill owners four cents for every pound of cotton they use.
That should total between $70 million and $80 million in the first year of the five-year program, said Missy Branson, a spokeswoman for the National Council of Textile Organizations, a trade association in Washington, D.C., that lobbied for the assistance.
“Anyone that opens a bale of cotton should be able to participate,” Branson said.
In the Upstate, she said, that would include Wellstone Mills of Greenville, Mount Vernon Mills of Mauldin, Alice Manufacturing of Easley, Milliken & Co. of Spartanburg and Inman Mills of Inman.
Textile companies must use the money to acquire, construct, install, modernize, develop, convert or expand land, plant, buildings, equipment, facilities or machinery, according to the NCTO.
Michael Jones, raw materials purchasing manager for Wellstone Mills, said his company applied for the federal assistance on Dec. 18 and expects to collect “in the neighborhood” of $250,000 a month.
“It gives you an opportunity to upgrade your equipment, buy new machinery, do some things you possibly couldn’t have done without the assistance,” Jones said. “Hopefully, it will help the remaining U.S. textile industry improve and stay in business.”
More than 600 U.S. textile mills have closed their doors since 1997, 114 of them in South Carolina, according to the NCTO. The trade organization argues that the U.S. industry has been hurt by unfair trade practices, especially from China.
