Anson County, North Carolina

ANSON COUNTY , NORTH CAROL INA facility that allows agricultural products to ship from that port. That has been a huge thing; the entire southeastern part of North Carolina is huge agriculturally and we’re learning to export to Europe and the Far East, and the Port of Wilmington has become an important part of that. So, our location between Charlotte and Wilmington offers us the opportunity to be one of the leading areas in making use of that port.” While agriculture is still Anson County’s most important industry, manufacturing remains a prime component, with over 20 percent of its workers engaged in the production and shipping of goods. Key sectors include advanced textiles, food and beverage, metal fabrication, and forestry and wood products. “Our largest employer is a textile company, called Hornwood, with about 350 employees,” Marek reports. “We do have a number of companies in the 100- 250 employee range; and then we have a lot of smaller companies in the 50-100 range. We don’t have any large business with 500-700 employees. So, our workforce is distributed over a large number of companies. COVID has shown that to be kind of an advantage for us. Our unemployment rate has gone up, but not as much as in the surrounding counties, because we don’t have that large automotive supplier that had to shut down because all its customers shut down. We have smaller companies that are a little bit more nimble. “An example is Hornwood. They’re a manufacturer of advanced fabrics, and they’re in a number of different markets. They do some automotive work; they do some aerospace work; they do a lot of work in apparel with specialized fabric; and they do some work for the military. When the pandemic hit, they were tasked by the government to come up with a fabric that met certain specifications for permeability - a fabric that would allow the person wearing it to sweat and to breathe, but would not allow particulate matter to enter. Think of it like Gore-Tex for viruses. They were able to develop a fabric that