By Richard Breen
SCBIZ Daily Staff

LAURENS -- The weak dollar has made a strong argument for expansion at a Laurens County manufacturer.

CeramTec North America Corp. announced Tuesday it would add 30 jobs and spend $10 million to expand its facility after signing a contract to supply technical ceramics to a U.S. petrochemical firm.

“We are calling it the C3 project,” said Michael Mueller, president of CeramTec North America in Laurens. “It will double our business in ceramics over the next two years.”

CeramTec North America is a unit of the German firm CeramTec AG, which is a subsidiary of Rockwood Holdings Inc., a $3 billion specialty chemicals and advanced materials firm based in New Jersey.

Ulf Zimmerman, chairman of CeramTec AG, said the company’s European units also competed for the project. Since the customer is based in the U.S., he said it made sense to serve it via the Laurens facility.

“We will produce this project in the dollar area, so we can eliminate any exchange problems,” Zimmerman said.

Upstate economic development officials have made it a point to recruit European firms while the euro has been outperforming the dollar. Officials at BMW Manufacturing Co. said earlier this year that an expansion of its Greer facility was being made more affordable by exchange rates.

CeramTec officials declined to name the new customer. It will supply the customer with concrete ceramic parts that are used in the petrochemical refining process.

“This is the first of what is expected to be several stages of investment,” Mueller said, adding that additional customers will be sought from around the U.S., Europe and the Middle East. “That’s what’s so nice about it – it’s a far-reaching business.”

The company hopes to have the new operation fully functioning by July 31, 2009. Jobs being added will range from process engineers to operators and logistics personnel.

With the expansion, CeramTec is likely to receive county-level incentives such as property tax breaks. Marvin Moss of the Laurens County Development Corp. said that process is still making its way through County Council.

He pointed out that existing businesses account for 85% of industrial growth in South Carolina.

“They’re our bread and butter,” he said. “It’s an advanced material, which is very good, and it’s going to be a technology-driven expansion.”