A new company that sorts and resells recyclable materials announced its plans this week to locate in Haywood County, adding a minimum of 30 jobs to the local economy and as many as 70 at full build out.

Sorting is done by advanced automated machinery. The technology comes from Europe, where there are rigorous and stringent rules governing what can be thrown away and what must be recycled.

“Everything is recycled in some fashion or another,” said Ken Allison, the entrepreneur behind Regional Recycling Solutions.

The recycling facility is a new business venture for Allison, who is from the Hendersonville area. He believes there is an unmet demand for an operation that can efficiently capture and commoditize recyclables in the larger region.

While most of us think about the bag of tin cans, glass jars and milk jugs under our sink when we here recycling, Allison’s operating on a much larger scale.

He plans to procure scraps from commercial and industrial sources — like the plastic, metal and rubber trimmings that come from the BMW plant in Greenville, South Carolina. Allison doesn’t anticipate household recyclables accounting for much of his volume.

The sorting operation would be housed at the Beaverdam Industrial Park inside a long, rectangular warehouse-style building, with a multi-step system of chutes and funnels and bins and forklifts zipping about. The footprint of the metal building would be about 1.5 acres. If the company succeeds, he plans to expand with two more buildings.

Allison has been in the research and development phase of the venture for a couple of years.

“A lot of thought and time has been put into this,” Allison said.

The company has one operation on the ground in Virginia. Allison envisions Regional Recycling Solutions growing to include a dozen or more facilities, with Haywood County serving as the corporate headquarters.

“We are really impressed with the site. It is absolutely beautiful,” Allison said of the 55-acre tract he plans to buy in the county’s industrial park near Canton along Interstate 40.

He predicts recycling will become a robust industry as the landfill model becomes passé and no longer practical. Allison wants to be on the ground floor of the movement to capture and commoditize those recyclables.

The business model is similar to a clearinghouse. He acquires waste that’s got little monetary value on its face, but after sorting it and accumulating a critical mass, it becomes a commodity that another factory somewhere else could actually use.

“All we do in this facility is separate materials and send them on,” Allison said.

While the operation doesn’t include a production or manufacturing side, industries that use recycled materials could be drawn to the area to be close to the source of their raw material.

“When you attract one resource, it is not unusual to attract another business to the county that uses that resource so they don’t have to ship,” County Manager Ira Dove said.

That’s the kind of spin-off county leaders believe is possible, a theory backed by some number crunching by a Western Carolina University economics professor who assessed the proposed operation’s economic impact for the county.

“Industries gravitate toward resources and supplies,” Commissioner Mark Swanger said.

Allison is a Western North Carolina native, from the Etowah community on the Henderson-Transylvania county line. He operates a family-owned commercial nursery and owns the Transylvania County Airport.

Allison had initially proposed the recycling facility in the Hominy area of Buncombe County. But Allison faced stout opposition from neighbors who feared it would ruin the character of their community, and it was denied a development permit under Buncombe County zoning rules this summer.

Haywood County has no zoning rules, however, a throwback to the private property rights mantra that anyone can build anything they want, anywhere they want.

The tract where Allison plans to locate is in the Beaverdam Industrial Park, specifically designated for industrial use dating back to its creation in the 1990s.

Haywood leaders offer deal on land in the name of jobs

Haywood County plans to give Regional Recycling Solutions a deal on a 55-acre tract in the Beaverdam Industrial Park off Interstate 40 near Canton in exchange for promised job creation.

The county is willing to sell the tract for $450,000 — about $330,000 less than it’s actually worth — in hopes of spurring economic development.

In exchange for the land discount, the company pledges to create 70 jobs in three phases over the next 5 to 7 years, totaling $24 million in capital investment.

If the company fails to produce the jobs or capital investment as promised, the reduced price on the land would be voided. The company would be obligated to pay off the $330,000 discount it previously got, according to “claw back” terms in the agreement.

The county spent $700,000 grading a portion of the tract in 2007 to make it shovel-ready in hopes of enticing industry.

The deal with Regional Recycling Solutions isn’t a huge coup given what the county put into the site — 70 jobs, and only 30 of those upfront with the rest contingent on expansion should the start-up company prove successful.

But it’s honestly the best the county can hope for in the industrial sector anymore, according to Mark Clasby, economic development director for the Haywood County Chamber of Commerce and county.

“Could you hold out? It is unlikely we could get a company with 500 jobs,” Clasby said.

And while 10 acres of the 55-acre tract had been graded, the rest of it is hilly. Clasby said its contour makes it nearly unmarketable.

“In today’s world, if you don’t have a shovel-ready site, you aren’t in the game,” Clasby said, adding it would cost a “fortune” to grade the rest of the site.

The county isn’t likely to undertake costly site grading on speculation of attracting industry again, so the site was destined to languish indefinitely, Clasby said.

So Regional Recycling Solutions seemed like the best chance the county had.

“The land has been sitting there, and we have been marketing it, to no avail,” Commissioner Mark Swanger said.

Swanger actually set the ball in motion to bring the company to Haywood County. The start-up company was initially trying to locate in Buncombe County, but it faced zoning hurdles due to opposition from the surrounding community.

Swanger had followed the story on the news and suggested cold-calling the owner.

“I said, ‘Let’s call him up and talk to him.’ At the time, we didn’t know if they were suitable or a good fit for Haywood County, but once we researched it, it is a good fit,” Swanger said.

Commissioner Kevin Ensley pointed to an intangible economic benefit the county may reap as well: the ability to market itself as a hotspot for green industry.

“We are going to be on the cutting edge,” Ensley said.

County Manager Ira Dove said the operation would help with the long-standing goal of diversifying the economy, and could open doors for more in the same vein.

“We are hoping for a broader economic impact being one of the first ones to have a facility with this type of new technology,” Dove said.

The company will initially build one facility and hire 30 employees, with average salaries of $29,000 plus benefits, with a handful of higher-paid managers. If successful, it would expand with two more facilities on site and hire another 40 people.

Clasby also pointed out the county will get around $100,000 a year in property taxes from the company should all three phases come to fruition.

As a designated industrial park tract, it has legal deed restrictions in place that prevent it from being used for retail or residential purposes, so Regional Recycling Solutions would not be permitted to carve off the part it doesn’t want for a shopping or housing development.

Coming next week

Some residents are concerned about the impact Regional Recycling Solutions’ new facility could have on the Beaverdam community. Read more about the concerns and the owner’s response to those concerns in next week’s edition.

Learn more

A public hearing will be held at 5:30 p.m. Monday, Oct. 19, at the historic courthouse in Waynesville on the incentive the county is offering — namely the discounted land price.