ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, July 12, 1996 TAG: 9607120030
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: A-5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: GREG EDWARDS STAFF WRITER
Optical Cable Corp., which this spring raised $6.7 million in a stock sale that drew national attention, spent some of the money Thursday.
The company began construction to double the size of its Roanoke County factory, saying it already plans future construction and more jobs.
Optical Cable makes fiber-optic cable for computer networking and telecommunication markets. It broke ground Thursday for a new building next to its office and manufacturing space at Valleypointe business park in northeast Roanoke County.
The 74,000-square-foot, pre-cast concrete building will connect with the company's existing building to form an L. Architecturally, it will be a mirror image of the original structure. J.M. Turner and Co. of Roanoke is building the $4.5 million project, which is scheduled to open in November.
Within a year of the building's completion, Optical Cable said, it expects employment at the plant to increase from the current 110 office and production workers to 310.
Optical Cable President Robert Kopstein said the company already has long-range plans in the works that would quadruple the size of the plant after this latest expansion and eventually provide as many as 1,000 jobs. That expansion, for which Kopstein would not give a date, would occur on 10 acres of the park that are next to the company's facility.
The latest addition will allow Optical Cable to make more than 1 million miles of optical cable annually. Luke Huybrechts, senior vice president for sales, said the addition will provide the company the capacity to continue to fulfill customer orders without delay.
"The significance of this [project] is readily described by a four-letter word - jobs," Roanoke County Supervisor Bob Johnson said. Johnson recalled that Roanoke County invested $2 million in utilities for Valleypointe when the park was begun seven years ago.
Kopstein started Optical Cable in Salem in 1983 with a partner and investors, whom he later bought out. The company, which moved to Valleypointe in late 1990, began selling its stock to the public in March.
For its second quarter ended April 30, the company reported net income of $2.07 million on sales of $10.2 million, compared with net income of $2.03 million on sales of $9.5 million a year earlier. Last month, the company announced the signing of a $13 million contract to supply 3,000 miles of cable to a Japanese company.
LENGTH: Short : 50 linesby CNB