GAFFNEY, S.C. – As part of the build-out of a new $330 million facility in South Carolina, GEM Inc has brought in several apprentice and journeylevel millwrights from the Southern Regional Council of Carpenters to assist with floor layout and elevation benchmarks.
The approximately 1.6 million-square-foot facility will be First Solar, Inc.’s third solar panel manufacturing plant in the SRCC region, with additional locations in Louisiana and Alabama. This facility is expected to create more than 600 jobs in the manufacturing sector in South Carolina. “There are a lot of people in here when these plants are finished,” said Alex Clark, Millwright General Foreman for GEM, Inc. “A lot of opportunities for maintenance and all kinds of stuff.”
To properly build out the facility, a crew of SRCC millwrights is working to ensure each piece of equipment that is brought in is properly leveled and can be set to the proper elevation. “Everything that we do here will allow those machines to last for years,” said Braedan Cochran, a millwright apprentice out of Local 1263.
Currently, there are six union millwrights on staff, but Clark says there will be many more by the time they wrap on the project. SRCC millwrights complete a variety of tasks from setting equipment to fabrication. “It’s such a broad spectrum of what we do; you have to have a massive skill set to build one of these plants,” said Clark. “Good hands, (you’ve) got to have them.”