Procter & Gamble Co. joins the panhandle of West Virginia community

Procter & Gamble Co. has begun manufacturing Bounce dryer sheets at its new $500 million plants in West Virginia and hundreds of jobs will be added as the company ramps up production of other products such as Pantene shampoo, Head & Shoulders shampoo, Aussie shampoo, Herbal Essences shampoo, Swiffer sweepers, and Olay and Old Spice body wash. The plant will be able to supply 80 percent of the East Coast within one day.

 

The Cincinnati-based maker of consumer goods (NYSE: PG) now employs 330 at the plant near Tabler Station, W.Va., which began production Feb. 23.

About 170 are local-hire technicians and another 40 are technicians who P&G transferred from other sites. P&G has 120 managers at the facility, of which about 55 are new hires and 65 are higher-level managers who transferred from other locations.

 

The West Virginia plant will gradually ramp up over the next two years and reach full production in 2020, P&G spokesman Jeff LeRoy told Staff reporter from Cincinnati Business Courier, "The workforce will include 900 full-time P&G employees by then."

The plant in Berkeley County, W.Va., is just the second new P&G site in the United States since 1971. The last to open was outside Salt Lake City, Utah, in 2011.

 

The West Virginia site has more than 2 million square feet under roof, which is equal to about nine Manhattan city blocks, according to P&G CEO David Taylor. It sits on 450 acres of previously vacant land.

 

“We’re constructing more cost-effective, multi-category manufacturing sites in geographically strategic locations, automating and digitizing these sites to minimize cost and maximize flexibility,” Taylor told market analysts recently.

 

P&G has 115 factories around the globe, including 24 in the United States.