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SleeveCo purchases chamber property
Manufacturer plans expansion, new jobs
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One of Dawson County’s largest employers plans to expand its operation and create 15 to 20 new jobs in the next year.

  

SleeveCo, headquartered in Dawsonville and a leader in shrink label printing, purchased more than an acre of property on Carlisle Road last week to move its machine division from the current location on Lumpkin Campground Road.

  

The new building, which is expected to be about 15,000 square feet, will allow SleeveCo to expand its printing and manufacturing division at the original location.

  

“We’re excited,” said Jyl Gryder, SleeveCo marketing manager. “Even though the economy and everybody is in distress, we’re still strong. Where everybody else is trying to survive, we’re surviving and expanding and being able to support what we’ve got.”

  

The expansion also makes way for a new printing machine SleeveCo developed, which Gryder said will open the printing manufacturer up to a much larger market.

  

“The new machine is going to put on 90 bottles per minute with one head, up to 150 with two heads and that’s going to put us in a whole different industry, the big dairies, bleaches and that type of products,” she said.

  

SleeveCo employs about 120 people, many from Dawson County.

  

Linda Williams, president of the Dawson County Chamber of Commerce, which sold the property to SleeveCo, said she looks forward to the company’s expansion and the addition of new jobs in Dawson County.

  

The chamber board of directors voted to sell the 1.09 acres of commercial land earlier this year in an effort to liquidate assets.

  

The chamber acquired the land in 2005 as the potential site for a new visitors center along the Ga. 400 corridor to serve the thousands of visitors Dawson County welcomes each week.

  

SleeveCo, Williams said, closed on the property Nov. 2 at $101,000.

  

Williams said the profits will be added to about $100,000 of pledges the chamber has received from area banks for the new building.

  

“That money’s in the bank drawing interest. It’ll be our down payment when we find a suitable building for our new chamber office,” she said.

  

With the current economy and real estate prices continuing to fall, Williams said the chamber board is aggressively searching for a site.

 

“We think the time is now or soon,” she said.