A few months after beginning operations in Gaston County, Newell Brands Inc. (NASDAQ: NWL) has formally unveiled its massive industrial facility there.

The company held a ribbon-cutting event yesterday alongside local officials for its 1.5 million-square-foot distribution center, which is one of the largest industrial buildings in the Charlotte region. Newell employs just over 150 workers there now, a company executive said yesterday. The facility is, to this point, the marquee project to land at Gateway85, NorthPoint Development's 365-acre industrial park between Gastonia and Lowell along Interstate 85.

The Gaston County facility is a key piece of Newell's Project Ovid initiative, the company's multiyear effort to remake its U.S. supply-chain model. The new distribution center joined another facility in Pennsylvania as Newell worked to add to its East Coast supply chain. The Gaston County facility will help distribute a number of Newell's brands, including Oster, Crockpot, Mr. Coffee and Rubbermaid, among others.

"This is the largest building in our Newell service network nationwide," Wheeler said yesterday of the Gaston County facility. "We have around seven facilities like this that are shared service centers. ... We like to call it a flagship facility in our system."

Newell's building sits on the line separating Gastonia and Lowell, and the company welcomed city officials from both municipalities to yesterday's ribbon-cutting. Gastonia Mayor Walker Reid said the operation is part of a run of "unprecedented growth and investment being made in our city."

The Charlotte Business Journal first reported in 2021 that Newell had signed on for a 1.5 million-square-foot facility at Gateway85. The project was previously approved for local incentives in 2021 under the code name Project Hearth. Newell is one of several big-name tenants to have landed at Gateway85, joining Amazon.com Inc. and the U.S. Postal Service.

NorthPoint Development's efforts at Gateway85 are at the forefront of significant amounts of industrial development activity in Gaston County in recent years. The county's land availability and proximity to I-85 near Charlotte have put it front and center for new industrial product.

According to a first-quarter industrial market report from Avison Young, Gaston County has 3.7 million square feet of industrial space under development, the most of any submarket in the region.

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