Tuesday the Belle Fourche community welcomed a new company into town, Pipeline Plastics.  The company is expanding its operations and they held a ground breaking ceremony Tuesday morning.

     The company says Belle Fourche was chosen for its access to interstate and railroad and its close location to the Bakken Oil Fields. Fisher says, "With the fracking technology that's been able to take advantage of the Bakken formation just north of us, that precipitated us finding a location close to that. We did explore several states all around the area including South Dakota and picked Belle Fourche because of its proximity."

    Governor Dennis Daugaard was in attendance for the ceremony and says that Pipeline Plastics is a great addition to the growing manufacturing industry here in South Dakota. Governor Daugaard says, "In the United States manufacturing jobs have been declining but in South Dakota because of our strong work ethic, our low tax environment, our adoption of advanced manufacturing techniques, we're increasing the number of manufacturing jobs to the point where about 10% of our work force is in manufacturing in South Dakota."

     As far as environmental concerns go Vice President Keith Fisher says the new plant will be environmentally friendly and use the same amount of water as a typical home. Fisher says, "No by product of any kind. The water we use is not actually consumed, it's used for cooling the pipe and it's reclaimed, filtered, and recycled. The only way we replenish that is through evaporation. Our product can be ground up and put back in through the manufacturing process from the facility. Once it's used in the field it can't be recycled because of impurities."

     Pipeline Plastics hopes to have construction completed by early 2013, and they say they will hire about 20 employees initially and 40 once they're at full production.

Darren Leeds