Asheville Buncombe Technical Community College Small Business Center
Russ Yelton
Enka, NC
2 Employees
We operate the Business Incubation Program and Small Business Center for A-B Tech. Our mission here is to help start-up businesses and businesses that are trying to expand to be successful. The ultimate goal is to create jobs. We’re starting with an international focus, and to do that, I went to Shanghai, China. We signed an agreement with the largest incubator in China… We agreed to begin to simply work together.
Alltec Lightning Protection and Grounding Systems International Headquarters
Chris Bean
Harshul Gupta
Canton, NC
30 Employees
We provide lightning rods for every size of home and business in places all over the world. We have offices in Hong Kong and a small manufacturing facility in Sin Gin, China where we manufacture some of our surge protection products. We have a full office in India for engineering, sales, and managing the manufacturing licenses. At some point in the future we will probably open an office in Europe.
GAS Distributors
Ric Goodman
Leicester, NC
2 employees
We import dried papayas, pineapples and other fruits for the North American market and then distribute them from our warehouse in Leicester. Our company is based in Costa Rica. I’m the U.S. marketing and import agent for a company called Casa Alementa, meaning house of nutrition or house of food. Casa Alementa had been in existence since 1993 or 1994. I joined them in 1996 or 1997. That company is basically in the business of procuring or growing fruit for the purpose of dehydration.
Blue Ridge Global
Alex Williams
Asheville, NC
23 Employees
We are the western hemisphere distributor for Martian Motors which are manufactured in China. The distribution center is in the old Square D plant. We expect to create 600 – 800 jobs in this facility, and it’s been a long time since Square D maintained that many jobs here. We believe that the pay scale will be good for administrative and collection positions.
Job Link
Helen Beck
Asheville, NC
15 Employees
We assist in retraining folks who have lost their jobs. If you don’t understand what’s going on in the global economy, you don’t understand exactly what’s going on with the local labor market. [Some workers] don’t want to get into training because they think someone is just going to come along and buy that plant, open it up and they’re going to go back to the mill and continue working, but that is not going to happen. It takes a while for them to understand …that they’re going to have to retool themselves in order to compete in today’s labor market.
Biltmore Oil Company
Eblen Oil
Rick Perkins
Asheville, NC
? Employees
We’ve been providing oil for WNC since 1930. Biltmore Oil provides home heating fuel. We also operate 8 Eblen Short Stop Convenience and Gas Stations connected with Citgo. All of our oil and gas is imported from Venezuela.
