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It’s called Chesapeake Bay Candle. But for 17 years, all the products in the signature line of Annapolis-born and Rockville-based Pacific Trade International were made by cheaper labor in Asia.
On Tuesday, the brand celebrates a sort of homecoming: the official opening of a new plant in Glen Burnie, where a workforce projected to grow to 100 will make the candles the company sells at Target, Kohl’s and other retailers.
Pacific Trade International is one of a small but growing number of U.S. manufacturers that are bringing production back from overseas.
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Turnover at the workplace is on the rise As the rising cost of doing business in China and other developing nations reduces incentives to make goods far from designers and sales networks, analysts see a renaissance in domestic manufacturing.
“It’s good for the United States,” said Harold Sirkin, lead author of a recent Boston Consulting Group study that looked at China’s rising labor costs to predict growth in stateside production during the next five years.
“That means more manufacturing jobs in the U.S.”
Of course, China will remain a major manufacturing center. Sirkin said the move makes most sense for companies that make products sold in the United States.
He cited several firms that are shifting at least some manufacturing back to the United States: heavy equipment manufacturer Caterpillar Inc., automated teller machine producer NCR Corp. and toymaker Wham-O.
Some Maryland companies are considering a similar move, state officials say.
Josh Barnes, vice president of Harbor Designs and Manufacturing in Baltimore, said his firm is trying to win a contract to make golf putters for a well-known lacrosse stick company that seeks to produce them in the United States.
“They’re looking to have the ‘Made in the USA’ name on it and it’s proving to be more cost-effective,” Barnes said.
If the so-called onshoring movement takes hold in Maryland, it would be good news for a sector that has been shedding jobs for more than a decade. In May, 112,900 people were working in manufacturing in the state, down more than 2,000 jobs from the previous year, according to federal data.
Michael Galiazzo, executive director at the Regional Manufacturing Institute, a trade association, said he has yet to see a flood of manufacturing jobs relocating here.
States with flexible work rules South Carolina and Mississippi are examples are offering incentives to entice companies to repatriate their manufacturing operations.
While Maryland does not offer incentives specifically to lure manufacturers back to the state, it does offer job-creation tax credits, low-interest loans and other breaks to help companies do business here, state economic development officials said.
Gallazzo said Maryland could take advantage of its existing manufacturing base and access to research universities and federal laboratories to attract companies.
It wasn’t homesickness alone that brought the founders of Pacific Trade International back to Anne Arundel County.
Mei Xu, who started the company and its signature Chesapeake Bay Candle brand with her husband, David Wang, in the basement of their Annapolis home in 1994, said the Glen Burnie plant would help the company respond to retail clients more rapidly and to increase its customer base, especially of mom-and-pop stores that want to sell locally made products.
“We realized that we were not competing well against our domestic competitors,” Xu said. “They’re responding to the market needs much faster.”
Economics also played a role. Since the company began planning for a domestic plant three years ago, Xu said, its labor costs in China and Vietnam have gone up nearly 19 percent. The price of wax, meanwhile, rose 83 percent a huge increase for a material that represents the No. 1 cost in candle production.
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