At the McComb Rotary Club meeting last week, upon learning that an official with a company called Modern Mill was the guest speaker, two people near me asked a similar question.
“What is Modern Mill?” wondered one of the two, Lucy Shell.
Sadly, I missed my chance to imitate the famous Barney Fife “Emancipation Proclamation” scene on “The Andy Griffith Show.”
I didn’t know much about the company either, but I could have pulled a Barney and tried to explain it anyway. I should have told Lucy:
“See, there were these people, and they were modern. And they decided to build a mill. So what kind of mill does that make? A modern mill!”
Had Lucy persisted, I could have added, “It’s very simple. They had a mill. Any kind of mill is very modern, no matter what they’re doing. So this is a modern mill!”
Ah, well. Maybe next time.
Anyway, the program was good. Steve Spirach, the Modern Mill vice president of operations, discussed what the company makes. It’s pretty interesting stuff.
Modern Mill uses rice husks as a key component of composite building products. Spirach mentioned a bunch of different ways these can be used, such as for decking, ceiling boards and porch floors.
He said the composites have a “natural wood look,” and had a few samples that we passed around. They were in the ballpark with a wooden color, but were more comparable to other composite building products. They can be stained or coated, he said.
The things Spirach discussed sounded positive. The company opened five years ago in Fernwood with three production lines and now has eight. Employment is at 139, almost all of them Mississippi residents.
Sales are best in the Northeast, and also doing well in the West and Midwest. Individuals can buy directly from the company at modern-mill.com, a professional, well-designed website.
Even so, I wondered how many of the Rotary members knew anything about the company. And sure enough, Bobby McDaniel pointed that out in a question to Spirach.
So we have a startup company, tucked away east of the railroad tracks at Fernwood, that appears to be growing, that has 139 employees, that says it’s selling its stuff in all corners of the country. Yet not too many of the business people at the Rotary meeting knew about it.
For a historical perspective, can you imagine somebody like Joe Bancroft, the flamboyant owner of Croft Metals, not talking up the business that he grew in Pike County back in the 1950s and the 1960s?
Back at the office after lunch, I mentioned the meeting to managing editor Matt Williamson. He pointed me to a story in the paper from April 8, when Pike County supervisors discussed whether to approve a local tax exemption request from Modern Mill.
The supervisors tabled Modern Mill’s request, along with two other companies that wanted exemptions. This is a rarity. Supervisors may not like giving tax exemptions, but when an significant employer asks for one, the board almost always approves it.
One supervisor said Modern Mill never responded to his request to attend a board meeting to discuss recent layoffs.
Come on. Public Relations 101: You don’t have to discuss your business in a public meeting, but if you’re going to ignore the invitation, and then you ask for a tax break, don’t be surprised when the supervisor who asked you to attend remembers that history.
At the April 7 board meeting, officials also noted that Modern Mill has not met its hiring promises, though the company appears to be close. That doesn’t square with a report about layoffs, though.
This apparently is the spot to insert another 1960s quote: “What we’ve got here is failure to communicate.”
That’s from the Paul Newman movie “Cool Hand Luke,” and it applies very well to Modern Mill, the local industry that operates so quietly that it’s not even a Dixie Youth Baseball sponsor. I checked.
I believe the company and the county can settle any differences. But Modern Mill has to communicate. It needs to let Pike County know about the cool things it’s doing.
