Area faces tough competition for supplier jobs

Boeing Co.'s 787 Dreamliner assembly line came with the hope of hundreds of supplier jobs that will crop up to support the aerospace giant as it pieces together the new passenger jets in North Charleston.

But those jobs aren't necessarily coming to the Lowcountry.

Because the aerospace industry tends to scatter its supply chain, vendors that work on the Dreamliner project could easily locate a short drive up the interstate to Orangeburg County, which has cheaper land, lower wages and an aggressive economic development strategy.

The Post and Courier's
Boeing Special Section.

Or they could open up in Savannah, where Gulfstream Aerospace Corp. employs thousands of skilled aviation workers and where local officials enjoy nothing more than taking business from the Charleston area.

The possibility of having to compete with other areas for Boeing supplier jobs has local economic development officials gearing up for a fight.

"Do we want to turn this into a blood bath? Absolutely not," said Charleston County Councilman Elliott Summey, who oversees the county's economic development committee. "But Charleston County is going to be competitive. ... We're not going to take this lightly."

Boeing hasn't yet put an estimate on the number of supplier companies that will need to be near the massive new assembly line under construction at Charleston International Airport.

"We don't have a sense for that," said Boeing Charleston spokeswoman Candy Eslinger.

Local commercial brokers and economic development officials say Washington-based suppliers have already begun to shop around the region for space. The question that remains is how far they'll be able to locate from the Boeing campus.

Economic development officials compare the Boeing investment to BMW's assembly plant in Greer, which has generated thousands of spinoff jobs from vendors and other businesses. But unlike an auto manufacturer that needs lots of parts right away -- a manufacturing practice termed "just in time" -- Boeing will be producing fewer planes and therefore have more time to round up parts from its suppliers.

And Boeing is not a company that's hesitant to scatter its supply chain. Parts of the 787 already are being flown from all over the world to Seattle for final assembly: wing tips from Korea, passenger-entry doors from France and the wing's movable back edges from Australia. Fuselage sections are made in North Charleston.

"You don't have to be that close," said Ed McCallum, a Greenville site consultant who works with companies looking to locate new operations throughout the Southeast. "Where they go -- whether it's an hour away or two, three hours away -- it doesn't matter for a major supplier."

McCallum pointed out that the Savannah region is home to Gulfstream, a private-aircraft manufacturer that employs 6,000 in that area. That operation shows that aerospace skills run deep within the local workforce, he said.

The agency responsible for recruiting new jobs and industry to South Carolina is keenly aware of the competition for Boeing suppliers that want to be relatively close to the North Charleston plant.

"We do believe there are opportunities, but I do think that you can make the assumption that North Carolina and Georgia will be pursuing those opportunities aggressively, too," said Kara Borie, spokeswoman for the S.C. Commerce Department of Commerce.

McCallum said a closer competitor for the Charleston region is Orangeburg County, which has a business recruitment team led by former Commerce official Gregg Robinson. That region has large swaths of ready-to-develop land, cheap utility rates and two major interstate highways.

"You can't count them out." McCallum said. "It's pretty common knowledge they're aggressive," he said.

Robinson confirmed that some Boeing suppliers have already looked at locating in Orangeburg, but he declined to give specifics.

"We have had a decent amount of interest as a result of the announcement, and everybody's excited about the opportunity," said Robinson, who called his rivalry with his Lowcountry counterparts "a friendly competition."

Reach Katy Stech at kstech@postandcourier.com or 937-5549.