Statesville has taken some hits lately from companies closing shop and laying off employees. I guess that’s to be expected in our wounded economy. Still, every once in a while, we get a shot of good news to keep us hopeful. That came for Statesville last week with the announcement that Kewaunee Scientific Corp. is expanding their furniture production plant over the next 5 years, and will add 100 more employees. That’s not many employees per year, but I’ll take positive growth over negative growth any day. Just holding your own nowadays is quite an accomplishment. Although many economic observers are starting to see some glimmers of hope for coming out of our recession, it’s likely to be a ”two steps forward, one step back” type of recovery. Here’s a Statesville Record & Landmark article on this news item.
Any time I hear or read something about Kewaunee, I perk up and pay a bit more attention than usual. There are a couple of reasons. One is that one of my neighbors is a part of the management team up there, and of course I’m always happy to see good things happen for a neighbor. The other reason is that back when I was in college, I worked there when it was referred to as “Technical Furniture” during one summer. That job along with a similar one at Blanton and Moore in Barium Springs may be why I like woodworking so much now. You might say I have sawdust in my veins. As I recall, it was more about having sawdust in my lungs back then. They did a fair job of removing sawdust as the machines cut the wood. Trouble is, the big bins that collected the sawdust would get clogged from time to time. That’s when they’d send in the kids working summer jobs to poke around the big pipe that discharged all that sawdust into the bin. After a proper amount of poking, the clog would let go and cover you from head to toe with sawdust. We didn’t know about dust masks back then. I don’t blame the older guys making us kids do that then. When we went back to school in the fall, I’m sure the bin would clog up eventually and someone else would have to do the dusty job.
Hey, that’s all part of the growing-up process- if you survive.
Stan,
Thanks for the positive comments on Kewaunee.
Fortunately, Kewaunee has not had a layoff in a number of years, and as you mentioned, that alone is better than the fate of most companies these days. All of the dedicated employees at Kewaunee do a terrific job keeping the Company competitive in Statesville against the competition who have moved their operations to Mexico and China. Management keeps ploughing the investment into the Statesville operations each year in hopes that this remains the case.
See you,
Mike 2/8