Daily News
From Home Furnishing Business
Emerald Furniture Plant Almost Ready for Production
May 25,
2016 by in Business Strategy, Industry 
Washington State-based furniture manufacturer Emerald Home Furnishings’ renovation of the former Hickory Springs furniture plant is nearly complete and should be ready to go into production under the name Emerald Mississippi sometime in June.
According to General Manager Terry Treadaway, contractors have a few more weeks of work to do and production equipment is already being moved in. A separate building has been used for warehousing and orders have been shipped from their for months.
Treadaway said they will start with 40 to 50 employees and one production line making five furniture groups. “Then we will expand as needed”, he said.
Emerald Mississippi will purchase the plant but first has been putting approximately $2 million into making improvements. New Albany and Union County obtained a $2 million capital loan to purchase the building first, in order to qualify for grant money and the building will then be used by Emerald on a lease-purchase basis. Emerald is receiving about $1.39 million in grants and putting in its own funding to raise the total to a second $2 million just to be spent on improving the building.
Emerald Mississippi was described as being the long-established company’s first stateside manufacturing plant. They have been obtaining products from overseas in the past.
“We were delighted with the combined efforts of The Mississippi Development Authority, along with Three Rivers Planning and Development District, the city of New Albany, Union County, and the Tennessee Valley Authority,” Emerald CEO David Beckmann said at the plant announcement this past September. “All of these entities teamed together to create a vision of the opportunity of manufacturing in Mississippi. We are a Seattle-based company and have been importing for decades, but this is our first effort in manufacturing upholstery in the U.S. The commitment to business in North Mississippi and the outstanding quality of the workforce here made our decision very easy.”
Although their present building is very large at 200,000 square feet, Emerald has purchased adjoining land so they can expand with little site preparation needed.
Emerald Home Furnishings® is described as a full-line supplier to home furniture retailers throughout the United States and in other countries around the world, including Canada, Mexico, Australia, Japan, Taiwan, England, Guatemala, Saudi Arabia and Costa Rica.