$80M deal shows SC’s business investment opportunities
Key points:
- • Prysmian is investing $80M in its Lexington County, SC plant, adding ~135 jobs by May 2028
- • CEO says Prysmian is one of just three U.S. makers of fiber and optical cables
- • Company is committing over $1 billion company-wide to new capacity and innovation
August 2026 — For a state that has spent the past two decades courting global manufacturers, a recent announcement has become the latest data point in a longer story about business investment opportunities taking root well beyond the state’s traditional automotive and aerospace corridors.
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In the Midlands town of Lexington, South Carolina, Prysmian North America announced it was placing a new bet on the Palmetto State’s workforce. The cable manufacturer, which has spent 140 years wiring the world’s data and power networks, said on Aug. 12 that it will pour $80 million into expanding its existing plant at 700 Industrial Drive in Lexington County, a move the South Carolina Department of Commerce says will create approximately 135 new jobs once the expanded operations come online in May 2028.
Prysmian is not a newcomer to South Carolina. The company, whose international headquarters sit in Milan and whose North American base is in Highland Heights, Kentucky, already operates in more than 50 countries with over 50 locations and 9,000 associates in North America, including a manufacturing plant in Abbeville County alongside the Lexington facility now being expanded. The Lexington site specializes in optical fibers, optical and copper cables, and connectivity systems — the kind of infrastructure that underpins everything from telecommunications networks to the data centers now multiplying across the country.
The company’s CEO for North America, Andrea Pirondini, framed the expansion in explicitly national terms, saying the investment demonstrates the company’s commitment to supporting U.S. demand for advanced digital solutions, and noting that Prysmian is “one of just three U.S. manufacturers of fiber and optical cables” now committing more than a billion dollars company-wide to new capacity and innovation.
That framing matters for South Carolina specifically because it places a single Lexington County expansion inside a much larger national scramble for domestic connectivity manufacturing. As artificial intelligence infrastructure and cloud computing continue to drive unprecedented demand for data transmission capacity nationwide, companies that make the physical fiber and copper that carries that data have found themselves suddenly strategic.
A state commerce agency announcement about 135 jobs at one plant might, in an ordinary year, read as a modest regional update. In 2026, it reads as evidence that South Carolina has positioned itself as a landing spot for the kind of business investment opportunities emerging from a broader reshoring and capacity-building push in advanced digital manufacturing, a push that companies like Prysmian are explicitly tying to their U.S. growth strategy rather than treating as an isolated state-level courtship.
Gov. Henry McMaster, in the Commerce Department’s announcement, called the expansion a source of “new opportunities for South Carolinians,” while Lexington County Council Chairman Darrell Hudson described the decision as a “strong vote of confidence” in the local economy, language that reflects how officials in midsized Southern counties now compete for these announcements with the same intensity once reserved for the state’s largest automotive plants.
Lexington County, situated just outside Columbia, has built a manufacturing base that includes chemical, industrial and advanced materials producers, but an $80 million commitment from an existing employer, rather than a new entrant chasing incentives, signals operational confidence rather than a first-time bet on unproven ground.
The timing also underscores why South Carolina’s economic development apparatus continues to emphasize expansions alongside recruitment of new companies. An existing employer choosing to deepen its footprint, rather than diversify to another state or country, tends to carry outsized credibility with site selectors evaluating where the next wave of business investment opportunities might land. Prysmian’s own public commitment of more than a billion dollars in company-wide capacity growth gives South Carolina officials a data point they can point to when courting suppliers, contractors, and adjacent manufacturers who might want proximity to an expanding fiber and cable hub in the Midlands.
Want more? Read the Invest: South Carolina report.
