The wide variety of Panola County’s business world was highlighted last Thursday as several city and county officials took U.S. Rep. Nathaniel Moran on a special, informative tour.
From Busy B Bakehouse and Wings & Whitetails to Tyson and GenPak, Moran spent the afternoon hearing from business owners about their operations and what he could do to help them.
The tour was organized by the Panola County Chamber of Commerce, with Busy B Bakehouse’s Madison Bagley taking the first slot, setting up at the chamber and showcasing her artistic skills — and her Food Network challenge win.
The group then moved to Wings & Whitetails, where Moran tested out a bow hunting program, before moving to UWeld, which works in oil and gas fabrication, near the intersection of U.S. 79 North and the Carthage Loop.
UWeld is a success story for the City of Carthage’s economic development efforts, city officials noted, as they located on what used to be vacant, city-owned land and have created more jobs than they originally anticipated.
Owner Clayton Williams toured the site with Moran and detailed how much of his business goes to other businesses across and down the street, from buying materials to getting UWeld’s work inspected. He told Moran 50% of their work stays in East Texas, and the other goes to places like West Texas and South Texas.
At the Tyson chicken processing plant, Moran learned the facility, built in 1969, now employs 450 people, processes about 1.2 million birds a week and sources chickens from at least 50 farms in Panola County, among its suppliers.
At the GenPak plant, which creates food and takeout containers, Moran met with employees as well as the corporate leaders and discussed difficulties with international competition and the differences in regulations across the nation before taking a tour of the plant’s production floor.
“On the import issue, here’s here’s a question I have for you is how, how are they gaining advantage?” Moran asked. “In some industries, when I talk to folks about the advantage from imports is because they have lower regulatory burdens overseas. And so they’re able to produce and manufacture the competitive product product for cheaper.”
The answer Moran got was lower regulatory burdens and other countries’ subsidies, as well as international companies importing products that are said to be recyclable, but in fact are not.
Another issue brought up at GenPak is labor, and how difficult it is to find skilled workers. Moran highlighted his Building Youth Skills Workforce Act and the larger workforce bill it is a part of.
“What we did this year, generally was we took what are strict parameters, and we we said, we really don’t want the federal government saying how workforce centers need to operate,” Moran said. “We want to see outcomes based workforce centers that are tied into businesses, and are actually producing the skills that businesses locally need.”
Moran also highlighted a bill he’s authored that would expunge records for nonviolent offenders of low-level drug offenses.
“So many of them right now, it covers up to a certain age, a young age, but these guys are, if they’re not violent criminals, non felonies, we’re just talking about a misdemeanor drug drug charge. If you’re 25, or 26, or 27, that can ruin your chances kill a job,” he said. “And that’s happening to too many people.”