Business View Magazine | July 2019

31 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE JULY 2019 AUGUSTA F I BERGLASS done an outstanding job doing simple things. For example, he used post cards back in the early days, much as the way people use emails, now. He would send a card around to various companies and just simply ask them if they had any fiberglass products that he could make for them. And that sort of thing was a real positive and forward-thinking idea.” Soon, the company moved on to other industry needs. Harte explains, “When coal-fired furnaces were required to reduce the level of emissions from the top of their stacks, a system was developed which allowed fiberglass to be used in the stacks, so when the emissions from the furnace came out of the firebox and travelled towards the atmosphere, they were put through what were called ‘clinchers.’ And those were designed to reduce the heat in the emission. Then they go through something called a ‘scrubber,’ which removes all of the debris that’s in the emission. And then, it goes into a fiberglass stack that goes up eight or nine hundred feet in the air. Well, Augusta Fiberglass built over 11 miles of stack liners, many of which are still in service.” The company also built the large jet bubbling reactors used to remove sulphur out of flue gases. “Those are the largest fiberglass vessels ever made, and we built four of those,” Harte notes. “And, at the time, there was no technology to build that. Boyd holds the patent. They created a system that used railroad track for the guns that spray the resin and the devices that wind the fiberglass into these buildings. They’re 120 feet in diameter and then they go up 64 feet. Those railroad type devices not only had to go around in a circle, they also had to go up and down. And that’s one of the most amazing things, I think, that’s ever been done in American industry.” Today, Augusta Fiberglass has 200 employees, including nine engineers and a full-time team of drafters. “The main facility is here at Blackville, South Carolina,” Harte reports. “At this location, we make fiberglass products – tanks, ducts, scrubbers, vents, you name it. If it’s fiberglass, we build it. We don’t care what shape it’s in; we have one of the finest carpentry teams in the world and I’ve seen them create molds for some of the doggonest