Today at Graniteville Specialty Fabrics

With 177,000 square feet of manufacturing space and a workforce of more than 100, Graniteville Specialty Fabrics is in the growth mode again today. It is building on its strength with specialty coatings that range from heat resistance for ironing board covers to fire retardant and water resistant fabrics for commercial and consumer applications.

Graniteville Specialty Fabrics also creates coatings that add color and extend UV resistance to a variety of fabrics. Its proprietary technology imparts performance characteristics that place Graniteville Specialty fabrics amongst the industry leaders in coated fabric production and development.

Graniteville Specialty Fabrics History

Graniteville Specialty Fabrics traces its roots back to 1845, when William Gregg built the South's first cotton mill in the town of Graniteville, SC, naming the company after the town. This town had 90 homes, several boarding houses, six stores, two churches, and a school for the mill workers and their families. The community got its name because most of its buildings were constructed of blue granite.

Over the years, Graniteville became the home office and central location for a collection of textile plants in South Carolina and Georgia, known as The Graniteville Company. In 1947, the company started its Specialty Fabrics Division. In 1996, Avondale Mills, one of the largest denim manufacturers in the United States, purchased The Graniteville Company.

Nine years later, Graniteville experienced the most tragic events in its history. On January 6, 2005, a train derailment released deadly chlorine gas into the air. Lives were lost. Business was lost. With the textile industry struggling to compete in open markets, this was the kind of event that should have spelled complete disaster. However, through the perseverance of community members and the dedication of many Avondale employees, Avondale’s Woodhead Plant was able to reopen two months later. Unfortunately, this success was short-lived, as Avondale was unable to keep any of its Graniteville plants in operation.

Luckily for the Woodhead plant and the Graniteville community, this was not the end. Thanks to the business foresight of the Woodhead, LLC partners (who purchased the Woodhead coating plant in August 2006) the Woodhead Plant has now been reborn as Graniteville Specialty Fabrics. This allowed employees to keep their jobs, thus creating a positive economic impact on the community and demonstrating to the community, customers, and competitors alike that Woodhead is still a viable manufacturing facility and will continue to service the industrial fabrics marketplace.

Officers

Jim Egan
President

Kevin Crean
Executive Vice President of Marketing

Doug Johnson
Executive Vice President of Development and Technical Services