In a surprise announcement last Friday, Bristol Compressors management said the company is planning to add 350 new positions at its plant in Washington County, Va.
The company is not planning to expand that facility, which measures about 700,000 square feet, but instead will add more equipment and jobs within the current plant. The move has been heralded as a $45 million investment.
Bristol Compressors has been in Washington County since 1972 and is the largest manufacturing employer in Southwest Virginia, with 2,300 employees at that facility now. The announcement should drive that number up to about 2,650.
Bristol spokesman Dennis Custance said the additional jobs being added in Bristol represent a "relocation of the Sparta plant."
"We're going to try to pull that volume back into this plant," Custance said from his office in the Bristol-Washington County Industrial Park during a telephone interview on Monday.
Custance said that some assembly equipment will be relocated from Sparta to Bristol, including heavy presses, robotic welding equipment and other compressor-specific production equipment. Other equipment, such as conveyor lines and ovens, will be left behind.
The announcement comes just about one month after Bristol announced plans to close the Sparta facility due to economic concerns. Custance said the motives remain the same, despite an announced $45 million expansion in Bristol.
"It's still the same as before," he said. "The two primary pressures are the same as before: Loss of sales volume and price pressure on our remaining volume."
Custance noted that competition from overseas compressor producers has led Bristol to tighten its belt and try to find ways to contain production costs.
"It's less costly to have one structure than two," he said. "We've been looking for ways to lower costs on our product and remain competitive."
To sweeten the pot, Virginia Gov. Jim Gilmore announced Friday that Bristol will receive about $1 million in incentives from state and local sources to move the jobs to that state. Included in the package are a $250,000 grant from the Governor's Opportunity Fund to assist Washington County with site preparation; a $500,000 grant from the Virginia Tobacco Indemnification and Community Revital-ization Commission and a $250,000 incentive from the Washington County Board of Supervisors and workforce training services from the Virginia Department of Business Assistance.
In addition, the company is eligible for further tax credits through the enterprise zone tax credit program provided by the Virginia Department of Housing and Community Development.
Custance said the incentives from Virginia will help his company control costs; however, "The incentive is only part of the picture."
So then, why did Bristol open the plant here to begin with?
When the company located here in Sparta, Custance said the company's outlook showed greater expansion. "The thinking was that our business would expand much more than it has. Our business has not expanded as we had thought."
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