Officials at a manufacturing firm in Wilmington are rolling into 2025 with optimism while eyeing potential challenges ahead.
Rulmeca, which makes motorized pulleys in Wilmington, started in October 2003 with two employees in a small office and using a shipping container as a shop. Over the next two decades, the firm grew to 14 employees and into a 30,000-square-foot facility at 3200 Corporate Drive.
Brian Vrablic, president of Rulmeca, said he and other company officials are starting 2025 looking at near- and long-term factors that will likely impact their business.
“In the short term, interest rates, or specifically high interest rates, will continue to weigh on equipment purchases as companies weigh the cost of capital,” Vrablic said. “This will impact manufacturing negatively in the short term as there appears to be continued positive economic numbers that are slowing the reduction of the target inflation rate of 2%.”
Referring to another challenge on the horizon at the time, Vrablic had said in December that a potential ports strike would “dramatically affect manufacturing as a number of local manufacturers rely on East Coast USA ports for raw material and components for local manufacturing.”
Luckily for Vrablic and other manufacturers, the International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA) and the United States Maritime Alliance (USMX) Ltd. reached a tentative agreement earlier this month, averting a worker strike at East and Gulf coast ports, including the Port of Wilmington.
Turning to another issue, Vrablic said some tax cuts from 2017 are sunsetting that, if not renewed, could decrease spending at the personal and business level.
“Any time personal spending is reduced, manufacturing overall will be impacted,” Vrablic said.
Infrastructure spending could slow throughout 2025 and 2026 as a federal infrastructure bill is set to expire in 2026, he said.
President Joe Biden signed the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) into law in November 2021. The law authorized $1.2 trillion for transportation and infrastructure (roads, bridges, etc.) spending with $550 billion of that figure going toward new investments and programs, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation.
Locally, officials were able to get a $242 million grant for their plan to replace the Cape Fear Memorial Bridge in Wilmington as a result of IIJA.
“If a new infrastructure bill is not signed in some fashion, manufacturing to support road and bridge building will be negatively impacted,” Vrablic said.
He said that despite the areas of concern, many economic indicators remain strong for Rulmeca.
“Longer term, there are indications that interest rates will continue to fall, having a positive impact on manufacturing,” Vrablic said. “Labor rates are stabilizing so manufacturers will be able to invest in both human and machine resources making them more efficient with more confidence.”
Overall, Rulmeca officials “have a positive outlook for 2025 on our specific markets and our ability to grow our business through these challenges,” he said. “We’re excited to see how 2025 shakes out.”
State and regional economists are keeping an eye on what incoming President Donald Trump’s promised tariff increases might do to the manufacturing sector.
They might not have as big an impact on New Hanover, Brunswick and Pender counties as others in the state, a regional economist said in December.
“I’m not sitting here to tell you that we should be very worried or very scared. Our direct exposure is actually fairly limited as a region. But clearly, we’re not isolated, and we’re dependent on what happens at the national level,” said Mouhcine Guettabi, regional economist, during a Wilmington Chamber of Commerce economic summit in December. “And as we continue to grow, we’ve become a hub for a lot of spending that comes from other places.
“So, to the extent that the consumers’ finances are affected, or some of these sectors potentially feel the ramifications of these national policies, that’s clearly going to trickle down.”
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