Moore County, NC Among Best Places to Start a Business in North Carolina

SOUTHERN PINES, N.C. - May 13, 2015 - PRLog -- Nerdwallet, a consumer finance website, has conducted a study to find the best places in North Carolina to start a business – and two of the top 15 cities are located in Moore County. Aberdeen ranked eighth and Southern Pines ranked eleventh in the study respectively.

To determine this ranking, NerdWallet examined 121,462 businesses in 115 communities and ranked them based on 2 key metrics:

1) Business Climate:  average revenue of businesses, percentage of businesses with paid employees, businesses per 100 people; and

2) Local Economic Health:  median annual income, median monthly housing costs, unemployment rate.

Both Aberdeen and Southern Pines boast impressive numbers across all of the variables examined in the study. With a population of 6,520, Aberdeen has 540 businesses and a striking $1.5 million in average revenue per business. Southern Pines has a much larger population of 12,592, and accordingly, more businesses, at 1,545. Both cities maintain high percentages of businesses with paid employees – 57.41% for Aberdeen and 44.92% for Southern Pines.

NC Governor Pat McCrory, NC Department of Commerce Secretary John Skvarla III, and the Economic Development Partnership of NC made a recent announcement about Aberdeen:  Reliance Packaging LLC will be expanding its manufacturing operations in Aberdeen and anticipates creating 48 new jobs and investing $3.5 million over the next 3 years.

Reliance Packaging is part of the Sigma Plastics Group headquartered in Lyndhurst, NJ.  Reliance manufactures and supplies printed bags and rollstock.

The project was made possible in part by a performance-based grant through the One North Carolina Fund.  Among the project partners was Moore County Partners in Progress (http://www.moorebusiness.org), the economic development organization serving Moore County NC.

"Not only are Aberdeen and Southern Pines great places to start a business, they, along with Moore County's other communities, are also a great place to live, work and play!" said Partners in Progress Executive Director Pat Corso.  "Anyone can visit our Moore Alive website (http://www.moorealive.com) to see all that Moore County has to offer."