New firms celebrated at Magnet lunch

The establishment of three new businesses in the Cape Girardeau-Jackson-Scott City area has left industrial recruiter Mitch Robinson optimistic about economic growth this year.

Robinson used the Cape Girardeau Area Magnet's annual business and industry luncheon Thursday to celebrate the new industries -- National Asset Recovery Service Inc., Signature Packaging and Paper, and Mid-South Wire Co. -- that are bringing jobs to the area.

About 85 businessmen and leaders, and area governmental officials attended the luncheon at the Cape Girardeau Career and Technology Center.

"This year as started off extremely well," said Robinson, who directs Cape Girardeau Area Magnet, an organization that recruits business and industry.

One of the new firms, NARS, opened late last year with 100 workers in temporary quarters on the fourth floor of Auburn Park Place near West Park Mall. The company will open a permanent call center by May in 40,000 square feet of the former Sears building in Cape Girardeau's Town Plaza.

The company anticipates expanding to about 500 jobs, said Chris Buehrle, president and founder of the St. Louis-based business.

The call center expects to have 350 to 400 employees at its Cape Girardeau facility by the second quarter of 2007, Robinson said.

NARS' decision to locate a domestic call center in Cape Girardeau promises to bring "the largest influx of jobs" to the area in a decade, Robinson told the gathering.

Buehrle told the crowd that the new call center will include a deli, fitness area and a day care for its workers' children.

NARS has two other call centers, one in Jamaica and another in Panama. In all, the company has more than 2,000 employees.

A job fair in October in Cape Girardeau helped convince the company that the area had a sufficient work force to staff the call center. "I spoke to over 800 people that day at the job fair," Buehrle said.

Buehrle said he started his business in 1993 in St. Louis with little more than a desk, a computer and a telephone. Last year, the company generated more than $45 million in revenue, he said.

Signature Packaging and Paper will open in a new 80,000-square-foot building in the Jackson South Industrial Park later this month.

"The building is just about done," said company president Dennis Vinson. "We have 18 employees going through training."

Within a year the company expects to employ 40 people at its Jackson facility.

Vinson praised the quality of the area's work force. "It worked out very well for us," he said.

Mid-South Wire Co. of Nashville, Tenn., was the third firm singled out for praise.

The company only hours earlier had announced plans to open a facility in Scott City. The company is a major producer of low-carbon steel wire for the appliance, shelving, material-handling, display, automotive, fastener/nail and other fabricated wire industries.

mbliss@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 123