Company looks to reclaim carbon fiber in Lake City

Florence County Council is scheduled to vote Thursday on incentive and lease agreements for a North Carolina-based advanced-materials company looking to create about 120 jobs in Lake City.

Materials Innovation Technologies hopes to build a new facility to reclaim carbon fiber from composites, Jim Stike, the company’s founder and president, said in a telephone interview Tuesday. The carbon fiber would be used in automobile or aerospace components, he said.

Carbon fiber is being used in the new Boeing 787 jet, a portion of which will be manufactured in Charleston, Stike said.

Materials Innovation Technologies has received several grants, including a 2006 Energy Department grant of $750,000 to continue its work on low-cost carbon fiber composites for lightweight automobile parts. During the previous year, the department gave the company a grant to begin its research into the composites.

In Lake City, Materials Innovation Technologies would make an initial investment of about $4 million, which it hopes to double in two to three years, Stike said.

County documents show the company’s Lake City location would be at Godley Morris Commerce Center, off S.C. 341 just west of town.

Materials Innovation Technologies was founded in the fall 2004, and its headquarters are in Fletcher, N.C., near Asheville, in the western part of the state.

Its commercial partners include a tool, die mold and machine shop; a molding production facility; a machine designer and fabricator; a marketing product development company; and a scale-up engineering group, according to its Web site, http://www.emergingmit.com.

The business has an environmental aspect because the company will reclaim its carbon fiber from material that otherwise would be sent to a landfill, Stike said.

The company also has a facility in Columbia City, Ind., where engineers are developing technology that the company plans to transfer to Lake City, he said.

In council’s meeting agenda released Friday, the name of the company was revealed as MIT-RCF LLC, but county leaders and economic development officials would give few specifics regarding the operation.

At its regular meeting last month, Florence County Council approved a resolution and second reading of an ordinance to create incentives for the company.

The resolution establishes an incentive agreement between the county and the project, while the ordinance, up for a third and final reading by council on Thursday in Lake City, sets out the terms of the agreement.

The arrangement would allow the lease and sale of land for Project Element while the property would be subject to “certain payments” in lieu of taxes, according to the ordinance.

A related ordinance, also up for third reading, provides for Florence and Williamsburg counties to expand the jointly owned industrial park where the business would be located.

Council on Thursday will hold a public hearing on the ordinances.

Council’s Thursday agenda also includes second reading of an ordinance that aims to repair or get rid of structures determined to be unsafe.

The ordinance is written so that a code official can enforce it only when a law enforcement official in Florence County submits a written complaint about a particular property, Florence County Planning Director Bill Hoge said.

Planners intend for that provision to avoid situations where a disgruntled property owner might file a complaint because he or she is angry with a neighbor, Hoge said.

The current building code states that the code official and county can take action only when a building is a hazard to someone in the public right-of-way or on someone else’s property, he said.

Under the proposed ordinance, the code official can require the owner to fix or demolish the building. If the owner doesn’t comply, the county could have the building demolished and place a lien against the property, Hoge said.

The ordinance also provides for an appeals process as well as abatement agreements, which establish time frames for correcting violations. The agreements can be as long as six months initially, although the county could grant two six-month extensions.

IF YOU’RE GOING

WHAT: Florence County Council regular meeting (including public hearing on ordinance establishing economic incentives and lease agreement with Materials Innovation Technologies, separate ordinance to expand industrial park in Florence County)

WHEN: 6 p.m. Thursday

WHERE: National Bean Market Museum, 111 Henry St., Lake City

INFO: Call Clerk to Council Connie Y. Haselden at (843) 665-3035