JAE LEE: “Right now, we are making about two million pairs of chopsticks per day. But we are increasing. End of this month, we’ll have seven machines coming in. So it’ll increase to like four million per day. End of this year, we will produce ten million per day.”
FAITH LAPIDUS: About one-third of the world’s population uses chopsticks. Japan, for example, uses about twenty three billion pairs of the sticks each year.
China may need more wood for producing chopsticks. But David Garriga says there is plenty of wood near Americus, Georgia. Mr. Garriga is the head of the local economic development council.
DAVID GARRIGA: “Rural Georgia and the cities of rural Georgia, they’re blessed with tons of natural resources. The Pacific Rim, especially areas in China and Japan, they’ve run out of wood, but we have an abundance of it.”
In central Georgia, sweetgum and poplar trees grow in large numbers. In fact, these trees make good chopsticks. This is because the wood is not firm and has a nice color. Unlike many Asian chopsticks, these Georgia-made chopsticks do not need to be lightened with chemicals and bleach.
Georgia Chopsticks opened at the end of last year. It received four hundred fifty requests for jobs in just two weeks. Today, the company employs fifty seven people at its factory. Jae Lee hopes to increase production and add one hundred more workers by the end of the year.
Every chopstick his company makes goes to Asia, where they are sold to stores in China, Korea, and Japan. Right now, Georgia Chopsticks cannot keep up with demand for its product.
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2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25