A family-owned lumber company announced it is investing $7 million and creating 28 jobs at its Rowesville Road plant over the next five years.
Dempsey Wood Products is investing in new dry kilns, a planer mill and upgrades to its sawmill.
"It will give us some new markets, will diversify our markets and make us more efficient in converting the raw material to the finished product," owner Ronnie Dempsey said.
Orangeburg County Council gave third and final reading in February to tax incentives for the expansion. The county will provide the company with fee-in-lieu of taxes and joint county industrial park incentives.
The investment follows Dempsey’s purchase of some real estate near its existing plant.
According to Orangeburg County property tax records, Timber Investors sold 13.3 acres to Dempsey for $112,795. The deed was filed on Jan. 25.
Some of the new equipment, such as the planer mill, will be going on the recently purchased property.
Dempsey Wood Products has its origins in the early 1950s.
Charles Parker Dempsey entered the sawmill industry at that time working for his father-in-law's company, P.L. Dean and Sons Lumber Co.
Dempsey and brother-in-law Robert Dean later took over the business. They expanded over the next 15 years to include three sawmills and five chip mill locations in South Carolina and Georgia.
The company, then Dean Dempsey Lumber, was sold to Stone Container in 1984.
Ronny Dempsey, son of Charles Parker Dempsey, started Dempsey Wood Products in Orangeburg County in 1988. Today, Dempsey Wood Products is owned and operated by Ronny and his son, Parker.
The company employs about 80, according to the Orangeburg County Development Commission website.
Dempsey serves the Southeast pine and hardwood market. The company's products include chips for paper production, landscaping mulch and pine and domestic hard wood lumber.
The company has a sawmill and kilns for dried lumber production.
Last year, the company made some improvements to bring lumber drying and planing in-house and to offer more kiln-dried capacity to go along with its construction timbers, pallet stock and chip production.
The company has already upgraded its primary log breakdown equipment.
The fee-in-lieu of taxes incentive allows industries to pay a fee based on a lower tax assessment than the standard 10.5 percent.
The joint county industrial park is a mechanism designed to provide an industry with additional incentives. There is no physical park.
