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A manufacturer of handguns and accessories will scrap plans to shift its headquarters to Tennessee and will expand in Florida instead.
SCCY Firearms in 2017 announced it would move from its original home in Daytona Beach, Florida, to a new nine-building office and manufacturing campus in Maryville, Tennessee. The project was expected to cost $22.5 million and create 350 new jobs in East Tennessee.
But SCCY Firearms owner and CEO Joe Roebuck told the Daytona Beach News Journal this September that he had changed his mind and would remain on the Florida Coast.
“It would be too costly to loose production in Daytona Beach and move,” Roebuck told the paper. “Can’t afford it.”
Roebuck said a slump in gun sales delayed his original plans to move to Tennessee in 2018. Last year, he leased a building and began manufacturing in Maryville, but he told the Daytona Beach News Journal he had difficulty hiring skilled workers in the area and that labor costs were 30% higher than in Florida.
Despite investing nearly $1 million in Tennessee to date, he recently informed local officials that he would not be moving forward with the new complex. SCCY Firearms plans to return its property in Maryville and indicated it did not yet accept other incentives; the total package offered by Tennessee officials was reportedly around $5 million.
Roebuck told the paper that 100% of the company’s products will be produced in Daytona Beach by the end of October and that he plans to hire 30 more workers by the end of the year to take his Florida payroll to 200 employees.
Image Credit: Courtesy of SCCY Firearms
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