Zero Connect’s initial investment expected to create 20-30 jobs

By Jason Evans

Staff Reporter

jevans@thepccourier.com

COUNTY — When it comes to economic development, negotiations often involve lots of painstaking efforts behind the scenes.

Once the work begins, it may take years before an official announcement is made and dirt is turned on a new business or industrial facility.

And sometimes things move “at the speed of light.”

At Monday night’s Pickens County Council meeting, the veil was lifted on what county officials had been referring to as “Project Whitetail.”

County officials announced custom cable assembly manufacturer Zero Connect will bring a $1.3 million investment, creating dozens of new jobs in Pickens County.

“Our business is booming,” company owner Larry Kendall said. “We’ve been doing it a long time. We manufacture copper and fiber-optic data assemblies for data centers, computer rooms, from the wall plate out. We’ll manufacture all that right here.”

The company is currently located in Albia, Iowa.

“It’s wonderful,” Kendall said. “Our workforce is wonderful, but our customers are down here.”

He said a lot of the company’s customers are expanding down South.

Kendall said the company had been looking to locate in Greenville County “100 percent” — until he met Alliance Pickens director Ray Farley.

“From that point forward, we never looked in Greenville again,” Kendall said. “They did a great job for us. They could not have helped us more. We went back to Iowa and regrouped and said, ‘This is the county we’re going to be in.’”

The company will bring an initial 20-30 jobs to the area with its $1.35 million investment, he said.

“That’s how we’ll start,” Kendall said. “We expect that to increase. We’ll grow the staff as fast as we can. We’d expect at least 75 (jobs) within the next five years, and that’s a conservative estimate.”

The company will be moving into the former Masters building in Easley, once the home of a kayak manufacturer, Kendall said.

“We’re remodeling and building,” he said.

The company will work with ReadySC regarding its workforce.

“They’ll help us do our training,” Kendall said.

Now that the announcement has been made, nothing’s slowing down on the company’s end. Kendall said he expects the renovation on the facility to be done on Aug. 1.

‘We’re rolling,” Kendall said. “We’re expanding rapidly. Our customer base is down here. We’ve got to get here.”

Moving to Pickens County and Easley will be a boon not only for the company but for its customers as well, Kendall said.

Being closer to its customer base will allow for quicker fulfillment of orders.

“A lot of our industry is quick-turn, ground freight,” Kendall said. “This area is wonderful for our customer base, for one-day UPS or FedEx shipping.”

Officials involved with the latest economic development announcement seemed very pleased at how fast things came together. Officials first heard that the company was looking to relocate in December of last year.

“This moved at the speed of light,” county council chairwoman Jennifer Willis said. “We were lucky that we had the right facility for them. We were lucky we were able to put together the package they needed.”