YEC Provides Power to Bluestar Silicones

Things Were Real­ly Hop­ping in late Jan­u­ary in YEC’s East York Indus­tri­al Park. Blues­tar Sil­i­cones, which in Sep­tem­ber pur­chased the build­ing for­mer­ly occu­pied by Hel­la USA, had dozens of con­struc­tion work­ers on site, build­ing labs and qual­i­ty con­trol rooms, installing man­u­fac­tur­ing equip­ment and con­vey­or sys­tems and more.

“Right now, it’s real­ly wide open,” said Strate­gic Devel­op­ment and Com­pli­ance Direc­tor David Beaty. The work is the cul­mi­na­tion of a years-long project to con­sol­i­date Blues­tar’s facil­i­ties in Rock Hill and Cal­i­for­nia, he says.

The 236,000-square-foot East York facil­i­ty “gives us lots of room for growth. Right now we’re plan­ning our busi­ness pro­jec­tions out through 2015 and beyond,” Beaty says. “We’re more than dou­bling our avail­able space.” The com­pa­ny’s facil­i­ties in Rock Hill and Ven­tu­ra, Calif., each mea­sured about 48,000 square feet.

Beat­y’s hap­py to be here. “The eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment group from York Coun­ty and the state of South Car­oli­na devel­oped an incen­tive pack­age that helped us move here. Of course, York Elec­tric Coop­er­a­tive has com­pet­i­tive elec­tric­i­ty rates. That was also a fac­tor.”

The arrange­ment is mutu­al­ly ben­e­fi­cial for Blues­tar and the co-op. “We’re going to be a sig­nif­i­cant cus­tomer,” Beaty says. As YEC Vice Pres­i­dent of Com­mu­ni­ty Devel­op­ment Marc Howie notes, “Indus­tries like Blues­tar help the co-op hold down the cost of ser­vice for all members—and pro­vide qual­i­ty local jobs.”

Beaty adds, “At matu­ri­ty in 2014, we will have about 120 employ­ees at this facil­i­ty. Cur­rent­ly in Rock Hill and in Cal­i­for­nia we have about 90. We have about 18 peo­ple that are relo­cat­ing with us from Cal­i­for­nia to the York area. The rest will be hired local­ly. Some have been hired and are in train­ing now.”

The local oper­a­tion includes pur­chas­ing, sup­ply chain, engi­neer­ing, qual­i­ty con­trol, research and devel­op­ment (R&D) and man­u­fac­tur­ing, Beaty says. “We have a lot of R&D effort that goes into devel­op­ing and sup­port­ing our prod­ucts,” he says. “We right now have about 25 peo­ple in R&D local­ly.”

An inter­na­tion­al com­pa­ny, Blues­tar Sil­i­cones’ North Amer­i­can office is locat­ed in East Brunswick, N.J. The local pre­de­ces­sor com­pa­nies that are now part of Blues­tar start­ed in 1984 in a fer­til­iz­er ware­house in the Guthriesville com­mu­ni­ty of York Coun­ty, Beaty notes. The oper­a­tion relo­cat­ed in 1986 to 911 East White St., Rock Hill.
Relat­ed Top­ics:
East York Indus­tri­al Park