Ranger Scientific LLC, an ammunition manufacturing startup, officially announced Tuesday that the company is planning to build a bullet production facility in Eastern Kanawha County.
The company plans to build the $50 million manufacturing facility on a former surface mine, officials announced at a news conference at Riverside High School, just west of the site.
As Riverside students, business executives and a large gathering of state and local politicians filled the school's auditorium, Daniel Pearlson, Ranger Scientific's CEO, announced that the company intends to hire about 400 people at the plant, which will be called Olympus.
Pearlson, whose resume shows a long history of working with U.S. military and defense contractors, told the crowd that Ranger Scientific intends to manufacture "harmonically tuned" bullets that cut down on weapon vibration during firing.
While that type of bullet is currently produced, Pearlson said his company will be the first to mass-produce that type of ammunition in an automated manufacturing facility. He said the company holds a patent on the manufacturing process.
Ranger Scientific's executives, Pearlson said, plan to have the fully automated facility built by the second half of 2017 and hope to start manufacturing bullets as early as 2018.
Pearlson said employment at the plant would increase over time, with roughly 50 people taking part in the first training class. The plant, he said, would employ people as welders, machinists, computer operators and programmers, manufacturing technicians and distribution staff.
The company executive wouldn't give an exact figure of what people would be paid for those positions, but he said it would be above the average annual salary in the region. People filling the more sophisticated roles in computerized manufacturing would be trained on site, Pearlson said.
The complete manufacturing facility, Pearlson said, could be fully operational by 2021, producing an estimated 500 million rounds of ammunition. He suggested that the company already has more orders than it could fill in its first year of production.
It was unclear how much of the company's business would come from military and defense contracts and how much would be driven by sport shooters and hunters.
The business-development event included a good deal of pomp, including the high school chorus singing "Country Roads" and a video presentation that showed someone using Ranger's patented bullets to shoot a beer can from more than a kilometer away.
Woody Williams, the native West Virginian and World War II Medal of Honor recipient, took a turn speaking at the event.
While at the podium, Pearlson emphasized the six-month search the company performed while looking for a place to locate its first factory. He and the company's other executives, Pearlson said, took jets and helicopters throughout seven states looking for the right place to build.
Pearlson mentioned several reasons why the company is moving to West Virginia: He listed the mountaintop's road access, its proximity to a railway and the Kanawha River, and the site's flat land. He later conceded that all the other states they were vying for investment also had flat land, and he suggested Ranger's decision to locate in Kanawha County was done to help alleviate joblessness in the area.
The CEO said West Virginia isn't the most attractive location for businesses, according to his experience. He lamented the fact that his company wasn't able to get a government-subsidized loan from the West Virginia Economic Development Authority because Ranger wasn't willing to give the agency the company's business and financial information, for fear of disclosure.
"The state is not competitive, by any stretch of the imagination," he said.
During the 2016 legislative session, Pearlson said, the company was responsible for getting lawmakers to vote for a bill that would have given small-arms and ammunition manufacturers breaks on their corporate net income taxes and other tax obligations. That law passed the House and Senate almost unanimously, but it was vetoed by Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin, who was absent from the business announcement Tuesday.
While on stage, Pearlson said the company already had decided on moving to West Virginia before lawmakers even took up that bill, but he suggested the company likely will work with lawmakers in the future to try to get that tax law passed.
He said tax credits, like the one that was proposed, don't cost the state anything because additional revenue is made up through things like increased income and sales taxes paid by people employed at the proposed plant.
"It's just a no-brainer," he said.
Many of the lawmakers who voted for that bill were in attendance at Tuesday's announcement, including House Speaker Tim Armstead, House Finance Chairman Eric Nelson and Senate President Bill Cole, who was one of the keynote speakers.
Pearlson emphasized that Ranger Scientific is not a "politically biased business," and he said people from "every political persuasion" had voiced support for the company's effort to build a facility in West Virginia.
Cole, the Republican candidate for governor, used his time on stage, though, to talk about the Republican Party's agenda in the Legislature and how laws passed by the conservative majority helped lead Ranger Scientific to start its business in West Virginia.
Cole specifically cited laws that helped shield businesses from certain lawsuits and the removal of "burdensome regulations" - although he didn't specify the regulations.
"I'm proud to stand here today and tell you we won," Cole said, adding that Ranger Scientific would give a "shot in the arm to the economy of the Upper Kanawha Valley."
Kanawha County Commission President Kent Carper took a different approach when he took the stage after Cole.
After recognizing Democratic Secretary of State Natalie Tennant, who was in the audience, Carper talked about how tax revenue and infrastructure spending would be an integral part of the bullet manufacturer's plans.
"It takes money to bring in jobs," Carper said.
Reach Andrew Brown at andrew.brown@wvgazettemail.com, 304-348-4814 or follow @Andy_Ed_Brown on Twitter.