Business investment opportunities: Behind SC’s factory boom

Key points:

• • USA Rare Earth’s $1.2B SC plant will reduce U.S. reliance on China for rare earth magnets.
• • Ferrara Candy’s $675M Orangeburg facility will create 1,000 manufacturing jobs beginning in 2029.
• • SC’s first-half 2026 investment spans solar energy, EV components, and rare earth minerals.

July 2026 — South Carolina is closing the first half of 2026 as one of the Southeast’s most active manufacturing investment destinations, with business investment opportunities spanning rare earth minerals, solar energy, EV components, candy production, and copper fabrication landing in communities from the Lowcountry to the Upstate. The volume and diversity of announced capital commitments over the past 90 days suggest not just a cyclical uptick, but a broader repositioning of the Palmetto State as a premier destination for capital-intensive industrial investment.

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The headline project is USA Rare Earth’s $1.2 billion advanced manufacturing campus, announced in early June at Bailey Park in Blacksburg, Cherokee County. According to reporting from Supply Chain 24/7 and industry briefs, the facility will produce neodymium-iron-boron permanent magnets and refined rare earth metals, which are central to electric vehicles, defense systems, and clean energy infrastructure.

China currently manufactures approximately 92% of the world’s sintered NdFeB permanent magnets, making the Cherokee County campus part of a broader national effort to reshore critical supply chains. The project will create approximately 490 jobs, with full operational commissioning targeted for 2028. USA Rare Earth CEO Barbara Humpton, noted that South Carolina offered the workforce, the infrastructure, and the strategic partners the company needed to execute at pace.

Reshoring drives SC momentum

The Cherokee County announcement follows a wave of major manufacturing investments across the state. In April, Ferrara Candy Co. — maker of Nerds, SweeTarts, Laffy Taffy, and Brach’s — committed $675 million to a 750,000-square-foot facility in Orangeburg County that will create 1,000 manufacturing and corporate jobs over the next decade. As detailed in the Official Press Release from Gov. Henry McMaster’s Office, the facility at Highway 21 and Rowesville Road will include processing, packaging, warehousing, and administrative operations.

While the scale of the site means initial production lines are slated to fully power up in the first quarter of 2029, corporate filings note that Ferrara successfully broke ground on the location in May 2026, solidifying its near-term footprint.

Concurrently, solar cell manufacturer Suniva announced a major $350 million investment to establish a 4.5-gigawatt solar cell factory in Laurens County. Tracked by the Laurens County Development Corporation and confirmed via Suniva’s June 2026 SEC filings, the expansion adds 564 jobs and scales domestic production of critical solar components at a moment of intense federal emphasis on U.S.-made clean energy.

The pace continued across May and June. Airsys opened its global headquarters in Woodruff with a $60 million investment and 215 jobs tied to AI data center cooling technology. Red Metals selected Charleston County for a $70 million copper manufacturing facility in June, creating 45 jobs and strengthening domestic supply chains. Austrian engineering firm Mosdorfer announced a $44.55 million facility in Oconee County — its first U.S. operation — creating 107 jobs. AmbioPharm confirmed a $118.96 million expansion of peptide manufacturing operations in Aiken County, adding 202 positions. And Isuzu Truck North America is actively hiring 150 workers for its manufacturing hub in Piedmont within Greenville County, with a formal hiring event scheduled for July.

Infrastructure and workforce

The quality of these investments reflects more than favorable tax incentives. South Carolina has spent years developing site-ready industrial infrastructure that gives companies confidence in fast execution. Duke Energy’s Site Readiness Program, which helped prepare Bailey Park ahead of USA Rare Earth’s announcement, exemplifies this approach. The program conducts detailed site assessments, infrastructure planning, and energy coordination before prospects arrive, reducing uncertainty and shortening development timelines.

Financing flexibility has also proven vital; the state’s General Obligation State Economic Development Bonds, including the authorization of a principal amount not exceeding $85 million to offset infrastructure costs for the Ferrara Candy project, provide the heavy financial tooling required to make large-scale sites viable.

Scout Motors reinforced this systemic alignment by opening its $25 million, 32,500-square-foot workforce training center in Blythewood in May, serving as a tactical ramp-up ahead of its broader electric vehicle assembly campus coming fully online. The center is designed to equip workers with the specialized skills required for modern vehicle manufacturing, signaling that companies committing capital to South Carolina are also investing heavily in long-term talent development. The state’s ReadySC workforce development program, which offers customized training at no cost to qualifying companies, has become a key differentiator in competitive site selection processes, particularly for manufacturers who require workers trained to specific technical standards before a production line is activated.

Nationally, the reshoring trend is being driven by geopolitical pressure on China-dependent supply chains, federal incentives tied to the Inflation Reduction Act and the CHIPS and Science Act, and a post-pandemic reassessment of offshore manufacturing risk. South Carolina’s ability to attract projects across critical sectors — rare earth processing, solar cells, EV components, copper fabrication, and peptide manufacturing — in a single six-month window suggests that the state has positioned itself as a primary beneficiary of that structural shift in business investment opportunities across the Southeast and nationally.

Want more? Read the Invest: South Carolina report.