ROME — The electrification of America is benefiting Revere Copper Products of Rome. Demand for copper and increased business led to the company opening a new manufacturing plant in North Carolina to meet the growing demand. After more than a year of getting ready, Revere cut the ribbon April 10 on its plant in Mebane, […]
ROME — The electrification of America is benefiting Revere Copper Products of Rome. Demand for copper and increased business led to the company opening a new manufacturing plant in North Carolina to meet the growing demand. After more than a year of getting ready, Revere cut the ribbon April 10 on its plant in Mebane, N.C. Located at 2125 Sen. Ralph Scott Parkway, the approximately 100,000-square-foot facility employs about 35 people who produce copper bus bars. The building was once home to Prescient, a steel truss and framing manufacturer. Revere leases the building. “Demand for copper is growing,” Amy O’Shaughnessy, VP of sales and marketing, says. “How ever it can be made, there’s pretty much a need for it.” The electrification of society – electric vehicles, upgrades to the grid, the growing number of data centers — plays a huge role in the increased demand for copper, she says. “We basically filled up our capacity in Rome,” O’Shaughnessy says. The 900,000-square-foot Rome plant employs about 350 people who melt copper and roll it into a finished product. The company completed a capacity upgrade in Rome that began in 2023 and ended in early 2024 that included swapping out a melting furnace — used to make copper cakes. “We put in a new furnace that has new technology and a greater capacity to melt copper,” O’Shaughnessy says. Revere needed to expand further, she says, and chose North Carolina because the company expanded using a different technique — the bus bar. In New York, Revere buys both scrapped and mined copper to use in its process, but the resource is already constrained. The bus-bar process begins with a copper rod, and Revere works with a new supplier that makes that rod. That supplier is located near the new North Carolina plant, which is also close to customers for the bus bar, which is often used to make the switch gear for electrical applications. Revere opened the new plant in February 2023 and has spent the past year getting fully up to speed. “We’re learning the equipment and how to most efficiently run it,” O’Shaughnessy says. Now that Revere has the hang of things, there will be a second wave of investment coming to the Mebane plant, she says. The company will be adding new machinery that will double the plant’s capacity. That also means it needs to double employment, O’Shaughnessy says. “What a great workforce down there,” she says, adding praise for the company’s Rome employees as well. “The people that make our products, they are the pulse of the company.” Headquartered in Rome, Revere is an employee-owned business. The markets it serves include electric vehicles, power distribution, architectural, electrical, telecommunications, air conditioning, industrial machinery, and equipment.