500 jobs coming to Berkeley

Businesses hesitate these days before making investments to expand, worried that the recession still holds a few more punches. But not the distribution industry, where another logistics company has committed to the Charleston area.

A Los Angeles-based company on Thursday announced a $25 million investment in a Berkeley County warehouse space and plans to create 500 local jobs over the next five years.

Moulton Logistics Management took over the complex at 2440 Clements Ferry Road, previously home to Masisa, a Chilean wood product importer.

Masisa pulled out of the space in 2007, the same year china importer Mikasa USA uprooted its local operations just down the road at 1980 Clements Ferry Road.

Both companies cited corporate restructuring, and more than 200 jobs disappeared as a result.

That's changing.

Late last year, Canadian apparel importer Gildan Activewear paid $20 million for the former Mikasa property to consolidate its Alabama and Virginia operations at a new Charleston distribution center.

And now Moulton, a 40-year-old company that primarily handles warehousing and distribution for as-seen-on-television products, plans to use its local space to cut delivery costs and transit times to East Coast customers and to better access markets across the Atlantic Ocean.

Two neighboring warehouses, both vacant for years, were reincarnated in a matter of months. State Department of Commerce spokeswoman Kara Borie called the Moulton deal "one of the largest since Boeing."

The announcement follows closely behind another key Berkeley County distribution center deal: Florida-based tire importer TBC Corp. plans to open the first half of its new 1.1 million-square-foot tire-import facility off Interstate 26 near Summerville by November, and the second phase by early 2011.

The 100-worker outfit will replace existing operations in North Carolina and Mississippi.

Patrick Moulton, head of new-business development for Moulton Logistics, said some of the infrastructure already is in place in the 184,000-square-foot complex. The company intends to hire workers by year's end.

"The future of the company is going to have a lot to do with the Charleston facility," Moulton said.

The company previously operated in Charleston under a partnership with another logistics company. Moulton called Thursday's announcement the company's "kickoff of independence."

He listed Charleston's port and South Carolina's business environment as factors in the decision. The company did not receive any state incentives.

Maritime insiders have credited the success of rival port operations in Savannah to the city's thriving system of distribution centers, developed long before Charleston's.

When Jim Newsome took over as chief executive of the State Ports Authority in September, he named improving the state's network of distribution centers as one of his key goals after recouping container volume.

The SPA recently developed with the Commerce Department a list of potential distribution centers to court. Because Moulton already had a presence in Charleston, it was not among those targets, Newsome said, but signals a change nonetheless.

"I think this is the front end of a trend of the growth of import distribution centers," he said.

Moulton's placement on Clements Ferry Road puts it in close proximity to the Wando Welch and North Charleston terminals.

The operation also arrives at a time when the state Transportation Department plans to widen that road from St. Thomas Island Drive to Jack Primus Road as a sales-tax project.