Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, November 8, 1994                   TAG: 9411080105
SECTION: BUSINESS                    PAGE: B-8   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: TODD JACKSON STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: MARTINSVILLE                                LENGTH: Medium

YARN PLANT COMING TO HENRY

Innovative Yarns Inc., which converts raw fibers into novelty yarns for the designer-apparel industry, said Monday it will move its operation from Eden, N.C., to Martinsville, into a plant formerly owned by the Sara Lee Corp.

The an-nouncement came three days after Ashmore Sportswear Inc., a Lancaster, Pa., T-shirt maker, said it will put a plant expansion - providing 150 jobs - into a 50,000-square-foot facility in nearby Collinsville.

Innovative Yarns, with a work force of 24, will expand to 50 workers by the time it completes the move to Martinsville. The company plans to raise its payroll to 130 at an unspecified date, said Frank Novakowski, executive director of the Patrick Henry Development Council.

The council spent the past four months recruiting Innovative Yarns, he said, adding that the successful effort included a Henry County first: donating an existing industrial plant to a new business.

Sara Lee last year donated the multistoried facility on Roy Street to the Partnership for Progress, a privately funded economic development organization, after the knitwear maker's downsizing included 1,000 layoffs over the past year at Martinsville and Gretna plants.

The partnership then agreed to give the 94,000-square-foot plant as a means of enticing an industrial prospect to Martinsville.

With more than a million square feet of vacant industrial space available in Henry County, Novakowski said, it has been the council's priority to market existing buildings. "It's a `sell-what-you-have' mentality," he said. "If you've got inventory on the shelf, it makes sense to try and do something with it first."

Innovative Yarns said it will pay an average wage of $7 an hour and plans to invest $500,000 on new equipment and capital improvements for the Martinsville operation.

Nancy Burroughs, the company's plant manager, said Innovative Yarns will move some of its equipment to the Martinsville site while continuing to operate the Eden plant. She said the company hopes to be fully operational in Martinsville by the end of the year.

Idled Sara Lee workers will be the first considered for jobs created by Ashmore Sportswear and Innovative Yarns, Novakowski said.