Bobby McKinney’s service pays debt to Albany, Dougherty County
Carlton Fletcher, Albany Herald
ALBANY — While many of his contemporaries are abandoning Southwest Georgia — for retirement getaways, to be with family, or in frustration brought about by abrupt change — Robert F. “Bobby” McKinney remains steadfast in his support of the community that he says “made me everything I am today.”
At 70, McKinney, the current chairman of the Albany Convention and Visitors Bureau and the Dougherty County Board…
Bobby McKinney’s service pays debt to Albany, Dougherty County
Carlton Fletcher, Albany Herald
ALBANY — While many of his contemporaries are abandoning Southwest Georgia — for retirement getaways, to be with family, or in frustration brought about by abrupt change — Robert F. “Bobby” McKinney remains steadfast in his support of the community that he says “made me everything I am today.”
At 70, McKinney, the current chairman of the Albany Convention and Visitors Bureau and the Dougherty County Board of Registration and Elections, has the energy of a man half his age. And he devotes much of that energy to working — both openly and behind the scenes — to improve the community that’s been home for 60 of his 70 years.
“Everything I am today, I am because of Albany and Dougherty County,” McKinney said Tuesday during a conversation at the northwest Albany office he’s maintained even during the five years that he’s been officially retired from his real estate appraisal and consulting company. “And I want to do everything I can to make this community better for that young generation that’s coming behind us.
“We can’t ignore the things that are wrong with our community, but we must never forget that we live in a place with the greatest per capita resources anywhere around. Are we one of the poorest communities in the country? Yes, without a doubt. And we have to concentrate on and address those issues that make us that way. But we also have to tell our story. And it’s a great story.”
When he gets on a roll, the best thing to do is get out of McKinney’s way and listen. He makes a compelling case.
“For a community this size, located where we are, just having a Procter & Gamble plant here is a huge thing,” McKinney said. “But then you realize, we have MillerCoors, Mars Chocolate, Sasco, Equinox, Coats and Clark, Phoebe Putney (Memorial Hospital) … and that’s not even mentioning the Marine (Corps Logistics) Base.
“And we have the (Flint) RiverQuarium, Thronateeska, Chehaw — which is an amazing facility — Theater Albany, Nicole Williams’ arts group (the Albany Area Arts Council), the symphony orchestra. And people from the northeast come all the way to Albany just to wander through the Civil Rights Institute.”
As he warms to the subject of Albany’s positives, McKinney becomes even more animated.
“OK, let’s say you’re a visitor in town and you’re staying at the Hilton Garden Inn,” he says. “You stand outside the hotel, look around you and you see that beautiful Convention and Visitors Bureau building, the RiverQuarium, the Civic Center and the Ray Charles statue, which has become one of the most recognized statues in the state.
“You say to yourself, ‘With all I’ve heard about Albany, how do they make all this happen?’”
McKinney’s not finished.
“Then you consider all the things that are in the works,” he continues. “I’ve had long conversations with (Albany City Manager) Sharon Subadan, and the plan that she and the City Commission are working on is going to create a very interesting dynamic downtown. There are retail, residential and educational possibilities that could completely change the face of our downtown.
“I really like the educational concept of bringing Albany State (University), Darton (State College) and Albany Tech(nical College) together in the downtown district. Bringing college kids into that district for classes, to shop and even to live would make it more vibrant, bring a new, exciting dynamic downtown.”
McKinney, who also serves on the local YMCA board, the Albany Area Chamber of Commerce board and Executive Committee, the Apalachicola/Chattahoochee/Flint Stakeholders and Transition Coordinating Council, is president of the local Quail Forever chapter, as well as a member of the Albany State University Real Estate Foundation, spends enough of his time working with the groups that promote Albany that he has an insider’s feel for their effectiveness.
And McKinney says those groups are doing the right things.
“The CVB, the EDC (Economic Development Commission) and the Chamber don’t make the news every day, but they are effective organizations making a difference every day,” he says. “I said it before: We have a great story to tell in Albany and Dougherty County. We’re fortunate to have groups that are telling it every day.”
As one of the community’s go-to supporters, and one of its most eloquent, McKinney continues to play a vital role in what he says he hopes will be a brighter future for all in the region. But he admits his window of influence is closing, for no other reason, though, than his desire to make way for new leadership.
“No one can take Bobby McKinney’s place until he moves out of the way,” he said. “There are young professionals now who need to step up and become our leaders for the future. I’m about ready to step aside, not because I’m no longer interested in our community’s future, but because I want our next generation to assume that role.”
Exports keep Albany factories thriving
Via Albany Dougherty Economic Development Commission, sourced from Global Atlanta.
ALBANY, Ga. – An aircraft manufacturer teaches maintenance to a visitor from Cameroon. A chemical firm affixes Portuguese labels to Brazil-bound tubs. Across town, posters at a health products factory pitch their soothing powers in German.
All of these stories were playing out during a recent Global Atlanta tour of Albany with Next Generation Manufacturing, the southwest Georgia city better known for its fields than factories.
Here, MillerCoors beer is brewed, Mars chocolate is mixed and paper products…
Exports keep Albany factories thriving
Via Albany Dougherty Economic Development Commission, sourced from Global Atlanta.
ALBANY, Ga. – An aircraft manufacturer teaches maintenance to a visitor from Cameroon. A chemical firm affixes Portuguese labels to Brazil-bound tubs. Across town, posters at a health products factory pitch their soothing powers in German.
All of these stories were playing out during a recent Global Atlanta tour of Albany with Next Generation Manufacturing, the southwest Georgia city better known for its fields than factories.
Here, MillerCoors beer is brewed, Mars chocolate is mixed and paper products are produced for consumer giant Procter & Gamble. But southwest Georgia has seen some factories flee overseas, and its host of smaller manufacturers are now learning the duality of the global economy with which local farmers of pines, pecans and peanuts have long been acquainted. On one hand, international integration brings more customers. On the other, it means increased competition.
Exports have become the lifeblood of Thrush Aircraft Inc., a company that could be considered new relative to its long history. In 2003, investors acquired the Albany factory and assets of the defunct Ayres Corp., which had made multiple models of Thrush’s agricultural spraying aircraft in a 227,000-square-foot building next to the Albany airport.
The firm’s renaissance has led to 180 current jobs, and plans are under way to bring 100 more over the next few years with the addition of a production line backed by a $200,000 job-creation grant from the Albany Job Investment Fund, a city program.
The city has buyers all over the world to thank.
“Eighty percent of our business is outside the United States, so exporting is everything,” said Payne Hughes, Thrush’s president, who in an interview highlighted efforts to diversify the company’s product mix.
While its planes have traditionally been used to apply fertilizers or pesticides across wide swaths of farmland, they can do much more than cropdusting (a practice the industry now prefers to call “aerial application”).
Thrush has designed a new gate-box attachment to help douse forest fires, giving owners a newfound versatility that could help justify the cost of a plane, which can run from about $700,000 to $1 million. It’s also building planes purposed for military surveillance, a product that caught the eye of the United Arab Emirates. The Middle Eastern nation ordered 24 of what some have called “militarized crop-dusters.” After being built in Albany, they’re shipped to IOMAX in North Carolina to be turned into Archangels, outfitted with assets like precision optics and missile systems.
“They’ve got more electronics in a plane than you can shake a stick at,” said Mr. Hughes, who added that they monitor borders with more flexibility and less upfront investment than unmanned aerial vehicles, also called drones.
Of course, cropdusting hasn’t gone away, especially as farms grow bigger and become more mechanized around the world. Spraying is banned in Europe, but it’s common on the banana farms of Central America and in the sugar cane and soybean fields of Brazil, a burgeoning market where Thrush has sent planes painted with green and yellow of the South American country’s flag.
“The agricultural industry is going very high-tech, and as it does get more high-tech, our products will get more and more high-tech,” he said. The firm doesn’t disclose revenues, but Mr. Hughes said they’ve doubled over the last five years.
China is also getting into the act: In July 2013, 20 Thrush planes were purchased by a state-owned company in the northeastern city of Harbin as part of a $55.6 million package that included U.S.-made tractors, combines and helicopters.
Overcoming Hurdles
But Thrush and others have found that reaching abroad isn’t always easy, and one problem is financing the orders when they come in.
Thrush’s China deal was backed by the Export-Import Bank of the United States, which provides credit to foreign buyers of U.S. goods, insures transactions and guarantees export loans by private banks and companies. The bank has been the subject of heated debate in Washington over the last year. At the end of June, Congress let its charter expire. It’s still limping along while awaiting a reauthorization vote, servicing existing loans without the ability to extend any new credit or guarantees. Some senators have said a highway bill coming up for a vote at the end of July would be a logical place to tack on Ex-Im for a vote.
A tell-it-like-it-is Georgia conservative, Mr. Hughes doesn’t seem like one to back an institution some influential Republicans have derided as a conduit for corporate welfare. He says he’s all for less government but that Ex-Im has plugged a gap in the private sector, insuring deals in places like Kenya, where Thrush first used Ex-Im in 2010. Buyers in such markets don’t have the same capital sources, and private banks and financiers can’t provide insurance for orders over $1 million.
If that weren’t enough, Ex-Im simply matches what other countries are already doing, he said.
“If we don’t do it somebody else will,” Mr. Hughes said.
Another Albany exporter, SASCO Chemical, takes a similar stance on the bank.
“Whether you fundamentally agree with the program or not, the U.S. cannot be the only country without this program. There are currently 67-ish other countries with the same program that U.S. manufacturers compete against every day. One thing we cannot have in the current times is the government taking tools away that makes us competitive,” said Marc Skalla, president of SASCO.
SASCO has been lauded for its use of state and federal resources to boost global trade, which the company says has supported growth at home. SASCO has a research center in Macon, a global sales center in Atlanta and an expanding manufacturing base in Albany.
SASCO’s main product is PolyCoat, a chemical used to keep rubber from sticking to machines used in tire manufacturing. In 2011, the Georgia Department of Economic Development helped introduce the company to the Mexican market, leading to a huge increase in sales there. Last year, SASCO received the President’s E Award for Exports from the U.S. Commerce Department. The current director of sales, Ed Juline, was recruited from a position Mexico.
Now, about 10 percent of the company’s sales go to places like Brazil, South Africa and Central America, and its export proportion is growing despite international headwinds, Mr. Skalla said.
Even before Ex-Im’s expiration, the company was hit by the dollar’s appreciation against both the euro and Brazilian real, which made SASCO’s products more expensive for buyers and gave a relative cost advantage to its main competitor, a European firm.
Meanwhile, SASCO was investing in boosting competitiveness at home. It launched its own trucking arm to gain more control over logistics, and it’s now finishing out a 40,000-square-foot factory in Albany, just a few streets over from its current Pine Avenue complex. That facility will support two new product categories: colorants for mulch and an anti-adhesive agent used in engineered wood production.
“We are always innovating at home in a search for continued diversification,” Mr. Skalla said.
Arguing for ‘Made in the USA’
While SASCO is an independent, family-owned firm, some other local manufacturers have had to prove themselves in a broader corporate context.
International pharmaceuticals giant Pfizer Inc. operates under the same 200-acre roof as Procter & Gamble’s massive Albany facility, but the two plants are separated by a wall representing the corporate lineage of the ThermaCare line of heat wraps.
Pfizer inherited the product when it acquired Wyeth, which had bought it from P&G. ThermaCare represents more than $100 million in annual sales for Pfizer’s consumer health care unit, and Albany is the only place in the world ThermaCare is made.
Jim Donovan, site leader in Albany, said ThermaCare is now available in 25 countries, and outside the saturated U.S. is where it’s is seeing the most growth. New releases of menstrual and flex-use wraps in Germany are shattering forecasts. Demand continues to build in international markets with recent launches in Russia, and multiple Mediterranean and Middle Eastern countries are set to see ThermaCare introduced this year.
But that international success cuts both ways: The more sales move abroad, the more the factory has to prove to company executives there is no better “central hub” for production than Albany. In the face of global competition, employees understand how important it is to keep things efficient at a factory that cranks out 50 million wraps per year, Mr. Donovan said.
“Theres’s a significant amount of engagement to ensure everyone puts in their efforts to ensure the site remains competitive,” he said, noting accolades the plant has won within the Pfizer system for employee engagement. “Everybody knows that there’s a constant external threat.”
Pfizer is a prime example of how global brands can compete from Albany, says Barbara Rivera Holmes, vice president of the Albany-Dougherty Economic Development Commission and interim president and CEO of the Albany Area Chamber of Commerce.
“Aside from being relevant to the consumer, industries need to be innovative, efficient and profitable, and from Albany, they can be. Low overall costs of doing business, partnered with a talent pool from which to draw and the infrastructure to move product, allows Albany industries to compete with their corporate peers and with other industries,” she told Global Atlanta.
The community is also getting its 15 biggest manufacturers to talk to each other through an industry roundtable where they gather each month to share challenges and best practices. The sessions also allow them to speak with one voice to economic development community.
“It’s an incredible program in that it harnesses the scale of industry to say, collectively, ‘This is what we need’ or ‘This is how we can give back,’” Ms. Holmes said.
As for exports, the community connects its companies with resources at the state level: The Georgia Department of Economic Development operates 11 trade and investment offices in 10 countries worldwide.
Albany Community Heroes go ‘above and beyond’
January 29, 2015
ALBANY — Albany civic leaders honored a handful individuals and organizations working to make Albany and Dougherty County a great place to live and work at the first ever Community Heroes Recognition Luncheon held Wednesday at the Albany Museum of Art.
Presented by Albany-Dougherty Economic Development Commission (EDC) as part of the “There’s Only One Albany” marketing campaign, the Community Heroes luncheon gave the organization a chance…
Albany Community Heroes go ‘above and beyond’
January 29, 2015
ALBANY — Albany civic leaders honored a handful individuals and organizations working to make Albany and Dougherty County a great place to live and work at the first ever Community Heroes Recognition Luncheon held Wednesday at the Albany Museum of Art.
Presented by Albany-Dougherty Economic Development Commission (EDC) as part of the “There’s Only One Albany” marketing campaign, the Community Heroes luncheon gave the organization a chance to salute individuals and organizations that have a positive impact on the community.
According to EDC President Justin Strickland, the purpose of There’s Only One Albany is to restore pride in the community and highlight the positive things about Albany and Dougherty County. The Community Heroes campaign grew out of that initiative to showcase those people, businesses and non-profits that are a source of pride.
“We know that heroes don’t all leap tall buildings or stop runaway trains,” said Strickland. “Sometimes they do simpler but still noble things like starting businesses or non-profits, teaching kids or fulfilling a need or a void in the community. Today we honor those individuals and organizations within the Albany community who are working to make our city and county an even more special place to live.”
That feedback Strickland was referring to was the open nomination process the EDC and There’s Only One Albany conducted last fall where the community was invited through OnlyOneAlbany.com to nominate and vote for people and groups they felt were making a difference in the community in a various categories.
Winners were selected in the categories of “Molding Minds” (Education), “Preserving Progress” (Community Service), “Strengthening Wellness” (Health care), “Young Trailblazer” (Youth 18 and under), “Exciting Imagination” (Arts), “Protecting Prosperity” (Local Business), “Serving a Purpose” (Non-Profit Organization), and “Overall Crusader” (Overall) by a selection committee based on certain criteria.
Those winners were announced at Wednesday’s luncheon where short videos about each winner were presented to the audience.
The “Molding Minds” award was presented to Sherwood Christian Academy Elementary School Principal Jill Johnson; the “Strengthening Wellness” award was given to Phoebe Putney Registered Nurse Gewndolyn Jones Collins; the “Exciting Imagination” award was given to violinist and Dougherty and Westover high schools orchestra teacher Alexander Reshetnichekno; the “Preserving Progress” award was given to Albany Elite Sports Director Earnest Brown Jr., the “Serving a Purpose” award was presented to former Albany Advocacy Resource Center Director Annette Bowling; the “Young Trailblazer” award was given to 18 yr. old volunteer Jawaun Stanley; the “Protecting Prosperity” award was presented to Dougherty County’s largest employer Marine Corps Logistics Base Albany; and the “Overall Crusader” award was presented to Resora New Communities at Cypress Pond Development and Hospitality Director and marching band and recruiting mentor Danielle Blackwell.
Each winner was presented with a Community Heroes award trophy as well as a $100 gift card for use at any Stewbo’s Restaurant Group restaurant and a variety of There’s Only One Albany merchandise, including shirts, hats and lapel pins.
More importantly from the standpoint of the event hosts, each Community Hero was given recognition for “going above and beyond” to make a positive impact in the community.
“Our (award winners’) hard work and dedication has helped us restore pride in our community and really embody the sentiment, there’s only one Albany,” said Strickland. “(The Community Heroes) are what makes Albany a beautiful place to live and a great place. Through this campaign it’s come back countless times the greatest asset we have in Albany and Dougherty County is our people.”
To learn more about There’s Only One Albany and to see the profile videos of each Community Hero visit OnlyOneAlbany.com.