Business View Magazine | July 2019

29 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE JULY 2019 AUGUSTA F I BERGLASS pharmaceutical, metals, plating, petroleum, bio- fuels, and mining industries, worldwide. The company was founded by John Boyd, a former Mississippi farmer who, according to longtime associate, and company Contract Administrator, John Harte, began working for his brother-in-law’s small fiberglass operation in Augusta, Georgia. “Boyd had a pickup truck and two other people working for him,” Harte recounts. “They got an opportunity to go up to the Greenville, South Carolina area to repair a couple of fiberglass tanks, and the total value of the job was under a thousand dollars. When they got finished, they’d done such a good job that the fellow who owned the plant wanted to know if they could make tanks for him. Well, the company had never done that, before, but Boyd got his people together and they figured out a way to do it, and, by golly, they did it. And they turned that $900 job into a $90,000 job. From that point forward, he realized that was the way to go.” “So, they started supplying tanks throughout the area – South Carolina and Georgia,” Harte continues. “The advantage of fiberglass is that it’s not as heavy, it’s not as hard to manage, and it also is, in many instances, less expensive than steel. At that point in time, though, into the ‘70s, there was a big debate about whether fiberglass could hold chlorine products. But after several tests and field work, the fiberglass manufacturers were able to prove that fiberglass was as effective, if not more effective, than steel in handling the sodium hypo chloride, sodium hydroxides, the bleach, the chlorine, and those sorts of things. And that opened the door to the wastewater industry and also to other industries, as well. “So, when that happened, Mr. Boyd was well- positioned to expand and move forward. The plant moved to Blackville, South Carolina, and they incorporated in 1974. They were originally located in Augusta, Georgia, but Boyd realized that they were going to get bigger and didn’t want to be in a metropolitan area like Augusta, because it wasn’t really attuned to manufacturing operations. One of the great things about John Boyd is the fact that he’s an incredible entrepreneur and marketer. He’s