US: Taylor Manufacturing in Bladen County Has Resumed Making Bulk Tobacco Barns

Source from:  Fayetteville Observer 12/24/2012

Taylor Manufacturing is back in the tobacco barn business.
 
For the first time since 2003, the Bladen County company is manufacturing bulk tobacco barns. The large storage units are being produced for the 2013 tobacco crop season.

 

"Everyone has kind of thrown the baby out with the bath water with tobacco," said Ron Taylor, who is president of the diversified company. "The novelty of it is that there is any interest in growing tobacco now."
 
This nearly 74-year-old company, first established by Taylor's parents, has a long history manufacturing farm machinery and equipment. The company also manufactures wood- and coal-burning stoves.
 
Taylor is the owner of Lu Mil Vineyard in his hometown of Dublin.
 
It was in the early to middle 1960s when Taylor Manufacturing first started making bulk tobacco barns. That grew into a much larger enterprise, with the company patenting and producing combines for harvesting the crop and other equipment for handling green tobacco.
 
"In our heyday in the '90s," Taylor said, "we had over 500 employees making tobacco equipment."
 
The company established satellite operations in Chadbourn and in the tobacco-producing area of Delhi, Ontario, Canada, north of Niagara Falls.
 
But demand started to dip with the federal buyout of tobacco programs in the early 2000s. Small farmers and communities that had been tobacco dependent suffered in the face of declining cigarette sales and cheaper leaf from abroad.
 
Because of the lack of demand, Taylor Manufacturing ceased the production of bulk tobacco barns altogether nine years ago.
 
"There is a comeback. There is interest," Taylor said. "There are some new markets around the world.
 
"We're not through with the tobacco domestic market. The foreign market is becoming more sophisticated. It has created some additional market for us."
 
For the upcoming tobacco season, the company is producing barns on a deposit basis. Taylor hopes to build between 100 and 200 barns at a price of $35,000 each, double what they were a decade ago. These are metal-coated buildings, insulated with modern curing controls.
 
"The fact is," he said, "there's still millions of pounds of tobacco grown. Now it's larger farms, and not every farm has tobacco like in the old days. I would suggest - if we could capture it - there's a lot of demand for American-grown tobacco around the world." Enditem