Greenville glove factory draws on personal, state roots.

Chris Garcia happened to be in the right place at the right time.

When COVID-19 broke on American shores, he had stepped to the helm of startup Health Supply US, formed in January 2020.

Coming from a family of first responders, the former deputy director of the U.S. Commerce Department was more than well acquainted by the shortages that plagued health care in the following months.

He learned that the United States made only 1% of the world's glove supply and witnessed how prices for PPE skyrocketed to more than 10 times their pre-pandemic market value in some cases.

"During COVID, everyone thinks that the number one item that was in most scarce supply was masks, maybe some vials or some tubes," he told a crowd during the Greenville Area Development Corp.'s annual meeting on June 6. "But really, the number one item that we could not get our hands on was nitrile gloves and gowns."

Under his leadership, the company began to churn out hospital gowns, masks and hand sanitizer in Texas, North Carolina and California. One other location was needed: a place to manufacture nitrile gloves in the Southeast.

"We embarked on an exhaustive search of the right state and the right county and the specific city that we could locate in," he told SC Biz News. He said a business-friendly climate and fertile ground for an innovation economy drew Health Supply US to a 182-acre property in Hughes Investment's Beechtree Business Park in Greenville.

It didn't hurt that South Carolina has a history of glove making or that Nephron Pharmaceuticals launched its nitrile glove operation, Nephron Nitrile, in the state in 2021.

"We embarked on this critical project on behalf of our nation, and in doing so, knew that manufacturing site selection was of paramount importance to operational longevity," Health Supply US Executive Vice President Aaron Petrosky said in a news release. "Greenville and the entire state of South Carolina displayed tremendous enthusiasm for life sciences and support for this medical device operation. We'd like to thank all those involved from the Lowcountry to the Midlands to the Upstate that enabled this project to find its Greenville home for many decades to come."

By partnering with GADC, Health Supply US purchased the 1 Quality Way property in February 2022 for $6.5 million under the new name for its nitrile glove operations, Glove One, according to Greenville County property records.

As announced during GADC's annual meeting at Greenville's...