Harry Smith tells the Flanders story | Eastern North Carolina Now

    Publisher's Note: This article originally appeared in the Beaufort Observer.

And how Pronamics and Oak Ridge fit into the picture

    Over the last few weeks we have published stories about Flanders Filters, a local manufacturing firm located in Beaufort County. The most recent story was about a change of management leadership at Flanders. Earlier stories focused on two partner companies that opened in the Washington Industrial Park, Pronamics and Oak Ridge, both of whom are owned, in part, by Harry Smith who was CEO of Flanders at the time they were started. Subsequently, Flanders was sold to Insight Equity Holding, LLC .

    In recent weeks we have heard reports of layoffs at Flanders as well as at Pronamics and Oak Ridge. We were unable to confirm with attempts to contact Flanders. Most recently we published an article about the management changes at Flanders. This article included a number of reader blog posts.

    Before going further, we would emphasize that the reader feedback comments and blog posts were not vetted. We do not vet any reader comment posts. But we did invite Flanders to respond. Wednesday (7-16-14) Mr. Harry Smith, former CEO and current Vice Chairman of Flanders and a principal owner of Pronamics and Oak Ridge sat for an interview with members of our Editorial Team. The video below are of that intereview.

    We began by asking Mr. Smith to review for our readers the history of Flanders in Beaufort County, where they are now and what he sees for the companies going forward. Here are his unedited comments:



    We next asked Mr. Smith to talk about the management changes and how Pronamics and Oak Ridge fit into the total picture.



    In the third clip Mr. Smith responds to some of the criticism that has been leveled at him, Mr. Boyd and their companies. We asked him to elaborate on the charges that have been posted that machinery equipment was moved from Flanders to Oak Ridge. He explains how that happened.



    Note: When you hear him talk about the startup of Pronamics you should know that the building Pronamics is in was the infamous QuickStart II spec building Beaufort County built. It sat unoccupied for nearly five years before Proamics bought it.

    He talks about the management changes and specifically how he came to vacate the CEO position.

    Most interestingly he concludes with a discussion of the issue of economic development, and specifically the approach Beaufort County has used in recent years and offers an alternative approach that the county could now use.



    Commentary

    We appreciate Mr. Smith affording us his time to "tell the Flanders story." We think he makes a compelling case for why Flanders, Pronamics and Oak Ridge are important to Beaufort County. While some may disagree, our assessment is that his explanation of the relationships between all three companies makes sense, although from a distance it may not look completely "kosher."

    Likewise, his explanation of the reasons for the management changes makes sense also. We wish we had had the benefit of this before we published our most recent article. Thus, we particularly appreciate his being willing to sit and answer our questions.

    But we think a bigger story here is his insight into economic development. The Beaufort County Board of Commissioners would do well to invite Mr. Smith to sit with them and talk about the county's strategy before it hires a replacement for Bob Heuts. We think Mr. Smith's perception of the potential relationship with Pitt County should be a top priority for the County Commission. And we find his ideas about the future of manufacturing in this region to be worthy of serious consideration.

    We learned a lot. We wish Flanders, Pronomics and Oak Ridge well. We hope they will be abundantly successful in Beaufort County. We wish them well.
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