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The industrial site once accommodating Cascades tissue plant was set to house another paper product manufacturer, until negotiations broke down earlier this month.
“Cascades and Global could not work out their differences,” said Barnwell County Council Chairman Jerry Creech at the July 9 meeting. “There’s still some hope out there, but right now negotiations are halted.”
Global Tissue is a privately owned tissue manufacturer based in Medford, New York. Similarly to Cascades, they produce facial tissue, toilet paper, paper towels, and other pulp-based products.
In April 2023, Cascades deemed the Barnwell facility - a 415,000-square-foot paper mill and converting plant at the Barnwell Airport Industrial Park off of Highway 278 - to be underperforming. Doors were shut by July 2023, and all 150 employees either received a severance package or a job offer to another Cascades business.
Cascades was paying the City of Barnwell around $840,000 annually for water and sewer usage. When the company closed this location last year, the city’s 2023-24 budget reflected a 40 percent cut in the water and sewer department.
The installation of Global Tissue at this facility would have yielded a similar profit for the city’s water department and opened up more jobs county-wide. Welcoming a new industry would have come at a time when Barnwell County ranked the sixth highest in unemployment across the state, according to a July 2024 report by the S.C. Department of Employment & Workforce.
For these reasons and many others, Creech prefaced his July 9 announcement by stating the news of Global Tissue’s non-start was not enjoyable for him to share.
“An offer was made and opportunity incentives were given to them by the S.C. Department of Commerce, but in the end they could not make the deal work,” said Danny Black, director of the Southern Carolina Alliance (SCA), an economic development organization developing industry in the Lowcountry.
Neither the county or Global Tissue officially announced they were breaking ground.
Throughout early 2024, Barnwell County leadership was paving the way for Global Tissue’s pending move under the pseudonym, ‘Project Colors,’ before any entities made an official announcement. Revisiting ordinances and approving resolutions for ‘Project Colors’ appeared on council agendas in February, March, and April 2024.
At the April 9 council meeting, an infrastructure credit agreement and fee-in-lieu of taxes agreement was presented by public finance attorney Emily Zackton from Parker Poe Consulting, the county’s contracted firm.
The council approved both agreements which ensured the county would receive a portion of the property taxes from Global Tissue beginning in the first year, unlike their agreement with Cascades which allowed a longer period for the industry to be essentially exempt from property taxes.
According to Black, SCA continues to work to bring another industry into the facility and the idea for another paper plant has not yet been given up on.
