For tiny Loris, manufacturing company’s arrival a welcome sight

About a mile and a half from the bulldozers pushing dirt in the Loris Commerce Center sits Shorty’s Grill: the town’s destination for sausage dogs, gossip and a chicken bog plate on Thursdays.

Nick Conner, whose father Shorty started the diner 38 years ago, remembers hearing about an announcement for a new plant in Loris early last year. Since then, a few customers had mentioned it, but little else had been said.

But when he started seeing construction crews at the business park, Conner welcomed the sight.

“When you employ 65 head, that helps,” he said. “It helps people like me. They’ve got to eat. They’ve got to shop. They’ve got to stop and get gas.”

Back at the park, more than 70 people gathered under a white tent Thursday to celebrate the groundbreaking on a building that’s expected to be finished by late December — nearly two years after local leaders first declared it was coming.

Accent Stainless Steel, a Canadian company that makes brewing systems for the craft beer industry, is building its U.S. headquarters in Loris, a small, proud community that needed some encouragement.

“When the economic downturn came in 2008 and things went to a standstill, for a number of years we didn’t see a lot of the fallout with our downtown area, but we have begun to experience that in the last couple of years,” said David Stoudenmire, who has served as the town’s mayor for two dozen years. “Our small businesses were visibly suffering. … When you’ve got a top quality international company like this coming to Loris paying the wages they pay with the benefits and wanting to be a part of the community, I think our folks realize what a difference that can make to jumpstart this whole area of Horry County.”

Accent plans to employ about 65 workers at the site. The jobs will pay an average of $22 per hour and company officials have already begun interviewing candidates.

The 50,000-square-foot, $3.1 million factory is projected to be completed by the end of the year and company leaders hope to be in full production by the middle of 2016.

Chris Riemerschmid von der Heide, Accent’s chief operating officer, said the company’s expansion in Loris means as much to the manufacturer as it does to the city.

“Not just a little step,” he said. “It’s not just a little investment or a little thing we do because we think it’s nice. It’s an equally serious commitment.”

Accent was founded in 1990 by Brad McQuhae, a British Columbia native who brewed his first beer at 13. As a teenager, he poured his homemade suds into empty champagne bottles and sold them to high school students for 50 cents apiece.

Although the company manufactures stainless steel process equipment for the pharmaceutical and agriculture industries, its signature product is the Newlands brewing system.

As the craft beer market has exploded over the last eight years, Accent officials say demand for their products has also skyrocketed.

“[Craft beer] went from being kind of a niche movement into something that has reached critical mass,” Riemerschmid von der Heide said. “It’s not niche anymore. … That’s the exciting part.”

Company officials say the facility will bring U.S. production closer to some of their largest customers.

Accent also has a history in South Carolina. Twenty-two years ago, the company helped construct Charleston’s Palmetto Brewing Co. — the first brewery built in the state since Prohibition. The firm also assisted the River Rat Brewery in Columbia.

Accent officials first announced their Loris intentions in January 2014 during a news conference at Horry Georgetown Technical College.

Local leaders and company officials said the project later hit some snags, including zoning issues and questions about its building plans.

“There’s been a lot of moving parts to this to make sure that it happened,” Horry County Council Chairman Mark Lazarus said. “Just because you go and get an agreement doesn’t mean it happens until you see something like this.”

City and county leaders finally sat down and hammered out what they needed to do to bring the company here. Officials with the Myrtle Beach Regional Economic Development Corp. also worked with the company to make sure all its needs were met.

Stoudenmire, the Loris mayor, said city officials waived a fire impact fee, saving Accent about $30,000. Some other permit fees were also dropped.

“We needed, as a city, to make sure that we did everything possible to help encourage them,” he said. “Everybody worked together on it. … We saw the potential and what it was going to mean to the region.”

During Thursday’s ceremony, the mayor talked about the financial shot in the arm Accent would provide to a community of 2,500 that most people outside of Horry County have never heard of.

“Those of us that live here know that it is home,” he said. “It’s a wonderful place full of good people, ready to work.”

Down at Shorty’s, Nick Conner smiled as he rang up customers by the takeout window. He talked about the local factories that have closed down over the years and the jobs lost there.

This new place, he said, is important.

“This town needs it,” he said. “Trust me.”

This story was originally published September 17, 2015 at 5:36 PM with the headline "For tiny Loris, manufacturing company’s arrival a welcome sight."