ACL Airshop opens new Greenville factory.

ACL Airshop CEO Steve Townes opened the company's new factory this month with exuberance and bold predictions.

Thirty-two new jobs and $7.2 million invested in the site are just the beginning, he said.

"A lot of jobs are going to come into this facility over a long period of time because the air cargo industry just keeps growing and we're going to grow with it," he said. "I predict that within five years we will be in almost all of the top 100 airports in the world. This place will probably have three shifts going on and we're going to have to blow out the back wall for another 25,000 square feet."

Townes said ACL Airshop is already in more than half of the top 100 cargo airports. The company sells, leases, repairs and manages unit load devices the containers, straps, pallets and netting that secures cargo during transit. Workers at the Greenville facility, overlooking the junction of Interstates 85 and 185, will manufacture some of that equipment. In addition to the 32 new jobs, the building will employ 90 others who had worked at ACL Airshop's old plant in Easley.

"We could have outsourced this entire expansion to lower-cost overseas locations, but instead we made a deliberate decision to build and grow right here at home," Townes said. "We're glad we made this statement right here with 110,000 cars a day seeing who we are and why we did it here."

The company has doubled its footprint around the globe in the past three years, according to a news release. ACL Airshop is doing business on six continents.

The company offers short-term leasing solutions when customers need spare unit load devices or when they have unexpected loads.ACL Airshop also offers long-term multiyear unit load device fleet management...