A $400 Million South Carolina Factory Expansion Will Create 105 Jobs

A South Carolina manufacturer is preparing to spend $400 million on a massive new cable plant while adding 105 jobs, a combination that illustrates how capital-intensive modern factory expansions can be.

The Okonite Company will build an approximately 552,000-square-foot manufacturing plant at its existing property in Orangeburg, about 75 miles northwest of Charleston. The new facility will produce high-voltage electrical cable used by utilities and other industries.

Construction is scheduled to begin during the fourth quarter of 2026 and take roughly two to three years, the South Carolina Department of Commerce announced this week.

The company says growing demand for high-voltage cable is driving the expansion.

A huge investment with a relatively small job count

The numbers make the project unusual at first glance.

A $400 million investment divided by 105 promised jobs works out to roughly $3.8 million in capital investment for every new position.

That does not mean each job costs $3.8 million to create. Much of the money will go into the building, production machinery and other long-lived equipment. But the ratio highlights an important change in American manufacturing: enormous industrial investments do not always produce thousands of jobs.

Okonite already employs about 238 people across its two Orangeburg facilities. Its main manufacturing plant has about 200 workers in 612,871 square feet, while a nearby compound plant employs 38 people in 147,378 square feet, based on Okonite’s current manufacturing-facility information.

Adding 105 positions would increase the company’s Orangeburg workforce by roughly 44%.

The new building itself will be nearly as large as Okonite’s existing Orangeburg manufacturing plant.

The factory makes cable for the electric grid

Founded in 1878, Okonite manufactures insulated electrical wire and cable for electric utilities, railroads, transit systems, industrial customers and other specialized markets.

The company operates six U.S. manufacturing plants and more than 30 locations nationwide. It has operated under an employee stock ownership structure since 1976.

Orangeburg has become increasingly important to the company.

Okonite recently completed another expansion of its existing South Carolina cable plant, adding new wire-drawing, insulating, concentric-wire and packaging equipment. The company said in 2025 that it had invested more than $500 million over the previous decade modernizing and expanding manufacturing facilities across the country.

The new $400 million project represents another major increase in that investment.

Why high-voltage cable is attracting investment

Electric utilities are spending heavily on the equipment needed to expand and modernize the power grid.

New data centers, manufacturing plants, population growth and increased electricity consumption are creating demand for transmission and distribution infrastructure. High-voltage cable is one of the physical products needed to move that electricity.

Okonite says the Orangeburg expansion is specifically intended to meet growing demand for its high-voltage cable products.

That makes the project part of a broader industrial story unfolding across the Sun Belt. New factories, data centers and power-intensive developments require not only more electricity generation but also the cables, transformers, substations and transmission systems needed to deliver that electricity.

South Carolina is helping with the project

The expansion will receive state economic-development assistance.

South Carolina’s Coordinating Council for Economic Development approved job-development credits tied to the project and awarded Orangeburg County a $1.5 million Rural Infrastructure Fund grant for site preparation and building construction.

The state has not disclosed the total value of the job-development credits in its announcement.

That matters when evaluating a project where the capital investment is exceptionally large compared with the number of positions promised.

The 105 jobs are also not available immediately. Okonite’s careers page currently says applications are not yet being accepted for the new plant expansion and that hiring will begin as the project progresses.

Manufacturing growth does not always mean thousands of workers

South Carolina has built much of its economic-development strategy around manufacturing, from automobiles and aerospace to batteries, tires and industrial equipment.

Okonite’s expansion shows another side of that strategy.

The project brings a large private investment, a building of more than half a million square feet and additional production capacity. Yet it adds 105 jobs rather than the workforce that might once have been associated with a $400 million factory.

For Orangeburg, those 105 positions would still represent a substantial increase at an existing employer.

For the broader manufacturing economy, the more revealing number may be the $400 million itself. Increasingly, the largest factory announcements are as much about machinery, technology and production capacity as they are about head count.