By Shelia Watson
Contributing Writer

Steel beams rise from the 1,150-acre site in Greer. Backhoes clear the earth and mixers pour cement for the foundation that will support BMW Manufacturing Co.’s $750 million plant expansion.

Announced in April, this expansion will double the size of BMW’s plant, giving the company the ability to build several new lines of automobiles. The new larger facility will not only affect Spartanburg County, its influence will ripple across the state, trickling down from the Upstate through the Midlands and across the Lowcountry.

“In the 20 years I’ve been researching the impact of economic development, no industry has had more of an economic impact across the region than the automotive industry,” said Doug Woodward, a research economist with the University of South Carolina’s Moore School of Business.

Auto manufacturers pay good wages and benefits and attract major Tier 1 suppliers to the area to be able to meet the just-in-time supply delivery system. And those suppliers attract Tier 2 suppliers, Woodward said.

“When we looked at this industry, we found that they bring in a much bigger supplier network,” he said.

With 52 of the automaker’s suppliers in South Carolina, and 40 of those 52 choosing to place new North American operations in the state specifically to partner with BMW — as well as a total North American supplier network that has grown from 22 in 1992 to 194 companies today — there few areas where the effects of the expansion will not be felt.

And with BMW’s expansion, current suppliers may need to expand and new suppliers may move in, creating thousands of jobs.

“We have systems suppliers who are experts in certain areas, and we expect them to bring expertise in that particular module to us, to help us refine the car,” said Robert Hitt, spokesman for BMW Manufacturing Co. “Clearly this new expansion will have an impact on our suppliers. Some may be expanding, and there may even be new suppliers coming in.”

Job creation would be about three jobs to every one job BMW creates. That means the 500 jobs BMW said it would create would result in 1,500 spinoff jobs. That doesn’t include industries that provide support services such as accounting, banking and legal.

In an economic impact study done by the University of South Carolina in 2002, it was determined that “for every direct job at the South Carolina facility, almost three additional jobs are created elsewhere in the economy. A typical employment multiplier for South Carolina industries and services is closer to two.”

“Right now we have about 5,400 jobs on our site that are our jobs,” Hitt said. “When you look at the suppliers we work with in the state, 40 of those came to South Carolina just to serve us. Of those 40, about 12,000 jobs were created. When you put that together with us, you can say that around 18,000 jobs were created as a direct result of BMW and its supply system.”