VOLUME 25 NUMBER 15 ■ GSABUSINESS.COM
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SEPTEMBER 5-SEPTEMBER 18, 2022 ■ $2.25
THE OPEN ROAD
Greif grows in Greenville
Industrial packaging maker invests in expansion. Page 6
Onshoring of gloves gets closer Nephron Nitrile celebrates arrival of PPE machinery. Page 8
$10M gift for Furman University
Alumnus and wife join ranks of greatest living donors. Page 7
A mile-long straightaway at the International Transportation Innovation Center helped ITIC attract Argo to Greenville. (Photo/ITIC)
Mile-long straightaway brings autonomy research to SCTAC By Ross Norton
Inspiring women
Female executives share keys to business success. Page 11
INSIDE
Leading Off .......................... 2 SC Biz News Briefs ................ 3 C-Suite ................................ 4 In Focus: Made in SC .......... 13 LIST: Manufacturers ........... 17 At Work ............................. 20 Viewpoint ...........................23
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rnorton@scbiznews.com
ooner or later, every driver spends a little time on the open road. So it makes sense that a company developing technology that enables a car drive itself will need a place to test autonomous vehicles at highway speeds. One company found it in Greenville: open road, closed course. Argo AI has several sites to test and use its autonomous vehicles in city centers, but in October the company will have spent some of its initial $2.6 million investment and hired the first of about 40 new employees needed to take the company to the big roads that connect those cities. The company sees 600 acres at the International Transportation Innovation Center on the S.C. Technology and Aviation Center complex as key to the open road and all that it promises. Argo AI in the spring announced its intentions to set up a test track in Greenville. It will
be the only place among the company’s test sites that can test open vehicles at sustained speeds of 70-miles per hour. Company cofounder and President Peter Rander was in Greenville to share plans with local leaders, including elected officials and representatives of the Greenville Area Development Committee, which played a role in securing the deal to bring Argo AI to the Upstate. In addition to Argo staff, Rander brought with him a Ford Escape outfitted with the compaRander ny’s autonomy technology. “We are developing for self-driving cars that autonomy technology,” Rander said to a crowd at the Greenville Country Club. “What Greenville offers is an amazing facility at SCTAC and ITIC with the capacity for us to test cars at high speed because highway driving and cars trying to drive themselves – you don’t just do that on
Reaching the future
A new Bosch project brings fuel cell production to Anderson. Page 13
the public roadways. You need what we call a closed course, a test site.” Rander said the 5-year-old company spent about five years in search of a suitable site. He said the existing automotive industry in the region and the presence of college engineering programs boosted Greenville County’s profile. “Our goal is (to be) a company that really wants to bring new technology for the betterment of the society … to make technology safe, accessible and really useful for all,” he said. “But to do that we really need a physical presence.” Rander said the test course will be hard on the vehicles and the Argo AI technology as the company attempts to anticipate and test for realworld applications. “There will be unique aspects (of the testing here), which in a way means a little bit of Greenville is going to be embedded in all of our self-driving vehicles – kind of a neat thought as you think about it being a new place here,” he said. See OPEN ROAD, Page 10