Acme-McCrary, a hosiery manufacturer, is relocating its warehouse and distribution facilities to Siler City and expects to add 100 jobs in the coming years.

The Chatham County Board of Commissioners approved an incentives package for the company worth up to $70,000 over five years if it meets hiring and investment goals.

Asheboro-based Acme-McCrary expects to invest about $500,000 in the 387,000-square-foot building. The company also expects to retain 42 employees already working in Siler City. 

Acme-McCrary makes hosiery and shapewear.

The relocation is good news for Siler City, which lost hundreds of jobs when the new owner of the Townsends chicken plant announced that those facilities would close.
 

The new Ukrainian owners of the North Carolina operations of chicken processor Townsends informed Siler City officials Thursday that they plan to close all the company’s facilities in the state by Oct. 1.

The move, which would put roughly 1,200 people in Mocksville and Siler City out of work and terminate contracts with hundreds of chicken farmers, comes just five months after a Ukrainian billionaire, Oleg Bakhmatyuk, paid $24.9 million to buy Townsends North Carolina assets out of bankruptcy.

As recently as March, an executive of Omtron, the U.S. shell corporation created by Bakhmatyuk, expressed optimism that the company could turn the operations around through cost-cutting and by ramping up exports of dark meat.

David Purtle, Omtron’s CEO and a former Tyson Foods executive, said this morning that Bakhmatyuk decided that he didn’t see a long-term future in the business.

“He just decided to shut it down and take his losses and go on,” Purtle said. “He just didn’t like the environment in this country and the lack of discipline that the poultry industry had.”

Townsends, the chicken processor whose North Carolina assets were bought by a Ukrainian billionaire earlier this year, is laying off 145 employees at one of its facilities in Siler City.

The company filed a notice Monday with the N.C. Department of Commerce under the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act.

The WARN notice said the layoffs amount to half the employees at the plant located a 1101 E. Third St. in Siler City. The layoffs will take place between July 1 and July 7, according to the WARN notice.

Townsends employs about 1,200 people in Chatham County and has contracts with hundreds of chicken farmers in Chatham and surrounding counties. The company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in December, and its assets were subsequently auctioned.

The North Carolina operations were acquired for $24.9 million by Omtron, a U.S. shell corporation created by Oleg Bakhmatyuk, a Ukrainian businessman who owns food, transportation, real estate and financial companies.

David Purtle, Omtron's CEO, did not immediately return a call this morning seeking comment.

In March, an adviser to the new owner, George Kikvadze, declined to rule out the need for layoffs.

"Our goal right now is to save as many jobs [as we can] and the way we can do that is by making the business as competitive as possible, " he said.

Billiards and checkers aren't action sports that get the adrenaline
pumping, but the competition still can be pretty fierce on the table or
on the board.

Triangle players can pick up a few tips, and even challenge the
experts, this week with two interesting events in the area - an
billiards exhibition and clinic with trick-shot champion Mike Massey
and the state-championship checkers competition.

UNC Chapel Hill's Summer Reading program has chosen for its next book a tale about a Latino soccer team from Siler City.

The book is "A Home on the Field," and the author is Paul Cuadros.  The book looks at the hurdles this team from Jordan-Matthews High School faced while winning a state soccer championship under Cuadros' coaching.

"The book offers insight into the complex issue of Latino immigrants coming to North Carolina to seek better lives and steady work but encountering significant resistance," according to a UNC press release announcing the selection.

The annual volunteer summer program asks all incoming freshmen and transfer students to read the chosen book and to come to campus prepared to discuss it in small groups. The program, like similar ones at universities across the nation, try to spur intellectual curiosity in students even before they get to college.

UNC-CH likes to bring the author of the book chosen each year to campus for an event related to the summer reading program. That shouldn't be too tough to work out; Cuadros is an investigative reporter who is now on the faculty at UNC-CH's School of Journalism and Mass Communication. 

The book was selected from a pool of 239 recommendations from students, faculty, alumni and communitymembers. The other finalists: "Predictably Irrational" by Dan Ariely; "Lipstick Jihad: A Memoir of Growing up Iranian in America and American in Iran" by Azadeh Moaveni; "Three Cups of Tea" by Greg Mortensen and David Oliver Reilen; and "The Free Men" by John Ehle. 

Oaxaca weavers will visit Siler City for three weeks, offering workshops and demonstrations.