The company that makes Sharpie-brand markers has announced plans to expand manufacturing operations in the state.
Newell Rubbermaid has acquired a 60-acre site in Manchester. The company’s office products division employs 17-hundred workers split between Maryville and Shelbyville. The company will relocate 60 jobs to the new facility in Coffee County next December.
Spokesman David Doolittle says the company expects to add jobs there over the next three years by attracting a global market.
“We only have about 30% of our sales overseas. So as China and other countries continue to grow, our goal is to reach 50% or even more international sales.”
Doolittle says the Sharpie brand has resisted the lure of moving production overseas because manufacturing ink is a highly complicated process. Every sharpie marker is made in Tennessee.
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