Oompah in the Bible Belt

When it comes to celebrations, folks in Spartanburg, S.C., do not limit themselves to just the usual American holidays. Last week, for instance, a few days after the Fourth of July, they all turned out for Bastille Day. French Consul Jacqueline Dietrich borrowed a spit from a German neighbor, ordered supplies from Franz Kastner's gourmet delicatessen (Perrier water, lox and asparagus), invited the Swiss consul and representatives from Spartanburg's 40 European companies to celebration and song. Rudolf Mueller, manager of Menzel, Inc., a German-owned plant that makes textile machinery, was not there this time, but his mind was fixed on next October, when a Bavarian festival show band will arrive to play oompah music for the annual Oktoberfest.

The cosmopolitan character of the small city (pop. 46,929) at the foot of the Blue Ridge Mountains--it even sports a symphony orchestra--is testimony to the singular success of South Carolina's drive to lure foreign investment. The state has attracted foreign factories worth about $1.7 billion, and some 40% of this investment is located in Spartanburg. Hoechst, Germany's chemical giant, operates a $300 million fiber plant there; Switzerland's Sulzer makes textile machinery, as does Italy's Pignone, and within a year Michelin will open a $100 million truck tire factory near the Milliken research center. All told, companies from eight countries have plants in the area, employing 4,500 local citizens. Richard Tukey, head of the local Chamber of Commerce, has just returned from a trip to Holland, Italy, Belgium and Germany, where he sweet-talked manufacturers of chemicals, plastics and ceramics, and told everyone he was from "Souse" Carolina.

The locals do not laugh at Tukey. Largely through his efforts, the town has avoided recession, fattened its tax rolls, improved its educational system and kept the unemployment rate more than two points below the national average.

Foreigners in Spartanburg are anything but clannish.

Their children attend local schools. They support the symphony orchestra and charitable drives. Some technicians like the place so much that they have married local belles and plan to stay.

Says Menzel's Mueller: "You can get everything from building permits to bank credit lines in five days. You can be in business six months earlier here than in Germany." Unit production costs, according to Mueller, are 5% to 7% lower in Spartanburg than in West Germany, while fringe benefits for the young, unskilled, nonunionized workers are not at all comparable to the cradle-to-grave cosseting of the European worker. Mueller, who raises a few cattle on the side, has found the economics of building textile machinery in the Bible Belt so favorable that he has been able to develop an export business. One of his customers: the Soviet Union.

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