Okonite plans to invest $400 million and create 105 jobs in Orangeburg County, expanding a South Carolina operation that already includes two production facilities. The cable manufacturer will build an approximately 552,000-square-foot plant at its property on Rowesville Road, according to the state's Sept. 22 announcement.
The company expects construction to begin in the fourth quarter of 2026 and take two to three years. The new building is intended to meet demand for high-voltage cable, making the project a long-term capacity expansion rather than an immediate production opening. A local report independently confirmed the investment, job count, location and construction timetable.
Public support accompanies the project
South Carolina's Coordinating Council for Economic Development approved job-development credits for the project. It also awarded Orangeburg County a $1.5 million Rural Infrastructure Fund grant for site preparation and building construction, the governor's office said. The announcement did not disclose the potential value of the job credits, wage levels for the planned positions or a hiring schedule.
Those omissions matter when measuring the project's eventual impact. The headline investment is large relative to the 105 announced jobs, reflecting the capital-intensive nature of cable manufacturing. The economic result will therefore depend not only on hiring but also on whether construction, equipment purchases and supplier activity generate lasting local business.
Building on an existing manufacturing base
Founded in 1878, Okonite describes itself as an independent manufacturer of insulated electrical wire and cable serving electric utilities, railroads and industrial customers. Its company materials list products for power generation and distribution, transit systems and other heavy-duty applications. South Carolina officials said the business has 34 locations nationwide and already operates two production sites in Orangeburg.
The latest plan follows an earlier Orangeburg investment. A company project brief described added wire-drawing, insulating, concentric-wire and packaging capacity in 2024, along with new production lines and building space. The new 552,000-square-foot proposal would extend that multi-stage buildout toward high-voltage products.
The scale also sets a demanding execution test. At the announced figures, the investment works out to roughly $3.8 million for each planned job, although that ratio does not measure indirect employment or construction work. Because the build could run into 2029, the 105 permanent positions are better understood as a target tied to a completed facility than as jobs available immediately. Neither the state nor the company gave a year-by-year hiring forecast in the announcement.
Orangeburg County promotes manufacturing as its largest industrial sector and emphasizes access to interstate routes and a regional labor pool on its development site. Those advantages help explain the location, but the project remains a forward-looking commitment. The next verifiable milestones will be the start of construction, the pace of the two-to-three-year build and the company's eventual recruitment details.
