ACME Smoked Fish Corp., a fish-processing company that brought more than a hundred jobs to Pender County, was one of the highlights of the region’s economic development portfolio last year.

The region beat out locations up and down the East Coast to land the 100,000-square-foot seafood processing plant. Behind the scenes, Duke Energy was responsible for generating the lead and getting ACME interested in North Carolina.

Utility companies such as Duke Energy and Brunswick Electric Membership Corp. often play instrumental roles in bringing new businesses to the state and region. Duke Energy has an economic development department that recruits companies to North Carolina and other states where the company provides power and natural gas.

“There is a self-serving component in our interest in economic development,” said John Geib, Duke Energy’s director of economic development in North Carolina. “If we’re successful in keeping the economy healthy, Duke Energy and its shareholders are healthy.”

In 2015, Duke Energy helped recruit more than $1.2 billion in capital investment and over 3,200 new jobs to North Carolina, a company spokeswoman said. For the past decade, the company’s recruiters have brought about $21 billion in capital investment and more than 81,000 jobs to the state, according to figures provided by the Duke Energy.

Even the smaller utility players play a hand in trying to expand the area’s business base.

While Brunswick Electric Membership Corp. doesn’t have a dedicated economic development department like Duke Energy, Don Hughes, CEO of the Supply-based electric cooperative, keeps tabs on local efforts.

“We’re involved and supportive of it,” Hughes said. “We all work together for the same common goal. That is the creation of jobs.”

Brunswick Electric Membership Corp. is the second-largest electric cooperative in North Carolina and serves about 86,000 locations in Brunswick, Columbus, Bladen and Robeson counties. Hughes said the county had the facilities and infrastructure to welcome new businesses.

“I think we have some things going for us,” he said. “We’re setting the stage. I think we’re going to land some new businesses in the community.”

It makes perfect sense for a utility company to help bring in new customers, especially a company like Duke Energy that has customers from the North Carolina coast to the mountains. Headquartered in Charlotte, Duke Energy is the largest electric power holding company in the United States with about 7.3 million electric customers in six states and 500,000 natural gas customers in Ohio and Kentucky.

Duke Energy has been in the economic development business since 1904 when the company focused on textiles, furniture industry and manufacturing. Duke Energy’s economic development team had 25 members in the ’80s, but it is now less than a dozen.

Geib said his economic development teams are now focused on high tech manufacturing, biotech and medical devices. Data centers have also been a popular get.

“Our economic development projects tend to focus on manufacturing,” Geib said. “It has the greatest economic multiplier.”

When Duke Energy completed its merger with Progress Energy in 2012, the company inherited the coastal counties and two seaports.

The company added Donna Phillips to oversee its efforts along the North Carolina coast. A native of eastern North Carolina, Phillips is based in Greenville but is in the greater Cape Fear region once a week at least. She sees the region’s ports and entrepreneurial workforce as the keys to successful economic development.

“Wilmington has a lot of small entrepreneurs, more than any other place in the state,” Phillips said. “That means we’ll have a lot of homegrown business. We can grow the talent we have here.”

Phillips said the region’s agricultural background and skill set lends itself to industries like ACME.

“We’ll focus on food production because of niche in labor force,” Phillips said.

ACME remains the prime example of how Duke Energy’s efforts are supposed to work. ACME was a site readiness project. Duke Energy’s Site Readiness Program identifies industrial sites in the company’s service territory for new companies.

“North Carolina was not on the original search list,” Geib said. “We peddled North Carolina to them.”

The company has a business development team actively selling North Carolina and other states in Duke Energy’s footprint to perspective businesses.

“We believe we were missing opportunities because not everyone picks up the phone and calls North Carolina,” Geib said. “We’re going to hire a team and go out and find them.”

John Nelms, Duke Energy’s senior manager for economic development in North Carolina, said there are several large industrial projects in the pipeline, which suggests the global economy favors the United States.

“Energy prices are very stable, and that is not the case as you look around the world,” Nelms said. “It is hard to run a business without a viable, stable and affordable supply of energy.”

Nelms did not specify what kinds of industries, but said one of Duke Energy’s goals is to lure an auto manufacturer to the state.

If that is going to work, they will need help from the state and local government as well as economic development groups.

Both Duke Energy and Brunswick Electric Membership Corp. officials stressed economic development is a team effort and only works when each member is pulling in the same direction.

“We don’t land these projects without support for our local and regional partners,” Nelms said.

Nelms praised Wilmington Business Development for closing the ACME deal. But that was in 2015. Economic  development has been slow for the past 18 months because of political wrangling in the legislature, though both Geib and Nelms are more optimistic about 2016 now that state lawmakers have accepted the need for incentives and business friendly changes to the tax code.

Despite the slow year, Geib said North Carolina continued to have economic development traffic in part because of the state’s good energy prices, well-trained and educated workforce and strong infrastructure.

“We’ve put the political process behind us. I see 2016 being broadly successful in economic development from southeastern North Carolina to the mountain communities,” Nelms said. “I am very optimistic.”

Duke Energy’s Economic Development Program

• In 2015, Duke Energy helped recruit more than $1.2 billion in capital investment and over 3,200 new jobs to North Carolina.

• Since 2005, the utility’s economic development team has recruited customers with capital investment of about $21 billion and 81,000 associated jobs in the state.

• Site Selection magazine included Duke Energy on its 2015 list of top 10 utility economic development teams in the U.S. The publication cited 37 projects and 4,111 jobs for project activity in 2014 for Duke Energy, whose team supported nearly $3.6 billion of corporate investment and 85 projects (including 28 expansions) for its entire six-state territory.

• The North Carolina activity saw the team’s largest number of projects for the year in the utility’s territory, while South Carolina saw the most project investment, according to the magazine’s rankings. Wal-Mart, GE Aviation, Amazon and DaVita Labs were among the investors.

• Duke Energy’s Site Readiness Program, which Site Selection said has been enhanced with industry-specific site certifications; consulting assignments to assist communities in identifying strengths and weaknesses; and expansion of business recruitment/lead generation efforts, has evaluated 187 sites since 2005.
Source: Duke Energy, Site Selection
 

Duke's Newest Eastern NC Recruiter

Donna Phillips, senior economic development manager for Duke Energy, joined the utility company in September. She is responsible for responsible for new and expanding industrial and commercial business recruitment in the eastern part of Duke Energy’s Carolina’s service territory.

Previously, Phillips worked at the N.C. Department of Commerce and Economic Development Partnership of North Carolina as well as economic development offices for Wayne and Duplin counties.

She is a member of the East Carolina University Board of Visitors and has also been a long-standing board member of the Small Business Technology Development Center and Chowan University Board of Visitors.
-Staff reports