Kent International Inc.’s first U.S. bike assembly facility began assembling bicycles for Wal-Mart Stores Inc. this week at its new Bicycle Corporation of America (BCA) plant in South Carolina.
With Gov. Nikki Haley and representatives from across the region on hand for the ribbon cutting ceremony, Kent executives said they now expect to assemble more than 1 million bikes a the plant in Manning, SC over the next four years; more than double what they had originally planned. The company expects to hire more than 200 people to work in the 200,000 square-foot-facility.
Kent’s customers include Academy Sports and Outdoors, BIG 5 Sporting Goods, Blain’s Farm & Fleet, Dunham’s Sports, Meijer, Mills Fleet Farm, Target and Toys R Us.
“We are seeing the economics of domestic sourcing changing due to increased energy and transportation costs overseas,” said Arnold Kamler, Chairman and CEO of Kent International. “We have developed a long-term approach and are taking action to create our own manufacturing hub onsite by encouraging companies to move component part production here.”
Kent presently outsources all of its bicycle production overseas (approximately 3 million bikes last year) due to the lower costs of production and has no plans to cut back on their importation. Instead, the plan is to fuel their growth thru bicycles which will be assembled and produced in South Carolina. The plan is to source as much as 60-70 percent of the components parts in the USA by 2018. At the present time, virtually all of the component parts are being imported from Taiwan and China. Kent’s new line produced in South Carolina will be called “BCA”-Bicycle Corporation of America” and this will be the first mass production of bicycles sold in the USA in more than 15 years.
In addition to Walmart, the Parsippany, NJ-based company is also a major supplier to Toys R Us, Amazon and Academy Sports & Outdoors.
