By Phyllis Flowers
Mason County has proven to be fertile ground to grow a manufacturing business.
The Felman Production silicon manganese plant in Letart, WV, employs 106 union workers making a good wage—about $84,000 a year on average—in a very competitive business. Felman is one of only two U.S. producers of this alloy, which is vital to steel manufacturing in America.
Photo by Felman Production.
Felman’s massive furnaces produce 100 tons of silicon manganese and 100 tons of slag, a byproduct of the smelting process 365 days a year. Silicon manganese is produced by heating coke, coal, dolomite and manganese ore—all of which are imported into the U.S. and shipped to Felman by barge—and quartzite. The smelting process takes about two hours and is repeated 12 times a day. The finished product leaves from the same docks that bring the products to Mason County and also by truck.
The plant’s success offers a great deal of satisfaction and pride to its long-time management team, who knows this rural slice of the Mountain State competes and wins against larger companies the world over. The staff credits the dedicated ownership team and the state and local governments’ mind for business for the success.
The state came through to help the company in 2014 when energy costs were going through the roof. Producing silicon manganese uses a lot of energy, and Felman’s electric arc furnaces run 24/7. Coupled with the cost of raw materials, all of which must be imported as none are produced domestically, costs were high. When skyrocketing raw material costs threatened the future of the plant, the Public Service Commission, showing itself to be very business-friendly, listened carefully to plant leadership—with support from the United Steelworkers union, Local 5171—and granted it a cut in power rates.
Felman also prides itself on the team relationship between management and labor, which executives have worked hard to foster for years. Some current employees have a parent or grandparent who worked at the plant, and one union worker has been working at the plant since 1968.
Things weren’t always so positive, however. In 2005, Highlanders Alloys LLC, the former owner of the plant, filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The facility was often shut down for days or weeks at a time and had been closed for a year. At the time, the unemployment rate in the county was 9.4 percent. Things were not looking good in and around Letart. Just 15 miles away in Ravenswood, Century Aluminum would soon close, leaving 679 workers without jobs, and other manufacturers would follow suit. Four investors—Igor Kolomoisky, Gennady Bogolyubov, Mordechai Korf and Uriel Laber—saw the potential of the region and, with dreams of reviving the manufacturing base in West Virginia, bought the Ohio River-side plant that is now present-day Felman.
The four investors got right to work. In the first year they invested $31 million in capital expenditures to make the plant the state-of-the-art facility it is today. Fourteen years later, Felman Production is a profitable processor of silicon manganese, selling its product to some of the largest steel makers in the world. From the hard work of West Virginians comes a product that helps build the world. Thanks to the ownership group, including millions of dollars of overseas capital invested in West Virginia, the plant now has two 12-hour shifts working seven days a week. The unemployment rate today in Mason County is 4.8 percent, much lower than in 2005. While Felman can’t take all the credit for the drop in the unemployment rate, foreign investment in this facility was without a doubt a positive for the county, its hard-working employees and the state.
The owners are currently finishing up a two-year, $2.5 million capital investment round, including the installation of a new $550,000 pelletizer, bringing their total investment in Letart to more than $60 million. The company’s property taxes help make the area a lot more financially stable as well.
In addition to its workforce and top-grade product, the company is also proud of the investments it has made on the environmental front. State-of-the-art equipment filters the air inside the factory while the smoke from its smokestacks meets the very high federal environmental standards.
Felman Production offers good employee relations, a solid tax base for the county and state and good stewardship of the environment. The owners and operators of the facility are fashioning a feel-good story about industry and good-paying jobs in the general area. If this is what foreign investment in U.S. companies is like, then God bless foreign investment.
About the Author
Phyllis Flowers is the purchasing manager at Felman Production. A resident of Letart, WV, since 1979, she has two grown children: a daughter who is a nurse and a son who works at the nearby power plant. The daughter of a U.S. Navy sailor, Flowers lived in several countries around the world growing up but decided to put down roots in Mason County, a short, six-mile drive from the Felman plant.
