South Carolina reels: power cable and fiber

Two kinds of cable plant in one small state

South Carolina has an unusual mix. At one end are power cable plants. Prysmian's Abbeville site makes high and extra-high voltage power cable, next to an existing medium and low voltage cable plant, and Okonite lists a manufacturing plant and a compound plant in Orangeburg. At the other end are fiber plants: AFL makes fiber optic cable in Duncan, between Greenville and Spartanburg; STL runs an optical fiber cable facility in Lugoff, northeast of Columbia; and Prysmian makes FlexRibbon optical cable in Lexington.

Prysmian announced in August 2026 that it plans about $80 million and 130 jobs by 2030 at Lexington to expand FlexRibbon capacity. More fiber cable made in the Midlands means more fiber reels going out to builds across the Southeast.

The last column is the general kind of reel each product ships on, not a figure from the makers.

Heavy reels need a different conversation

A reel built to carry high-voltage cable is a different object from a building wire spool. Okonite's technical notes list cable capacities by reel: a 96x48x48 reel weighing 758 pounds carries up to 6,000 pounds of cable, and a heavier 1,078 pound build of the same size carries up to 15,000. Reels at that end of the range often have reinforced arbor holes and steel hardware.

Empties that size are slow sellers but real ones. They need a forklift with long forks or a crane to load, they take a lot of trailer floor, and Sonoco's packing guide puts only 8 reels with 96 inch flanges in a 53-foot van. When you send us a lot that includes them, tell us how they are lifted on your site and whether they still have lagging or steel bands on them.

Utilities: Dominion, Duke and Santee Cooper

EIA's 2024 list of South Carolina's top five retailers is Dominion Energy South Carolina, Duke Energy Carolinas, the South Carolina Public Service Authority (Santee Cooper), Duke Energy Progress and Berkeley Electric Cooperative. Dominion serves the Midlands and Lowcountry, Duke the Upstate and Pee Dee, and Santee Cooper is the state-owned utility that also supplies the co-ops.

Between them they run a lot of underground distribution in the growing coastal and Upstate suburbs. Each new phase of a development, each feeder extension and each storm rebuild puts more nailed reels into contractor yards.

Fiber money in South Carolina

NTIA allocated South Carolina $551,535,983.05 in its June 2023 BEAD table. That is smaller than its neighbors' shares, but the state is also smaller, and much of the unserved area is in the rural Pee Dee, the western Piedmont and the sea islands. Builders there want empty reels of the right drum size to handle cable they cut and move, and once a segment is finished their staging yards have empties to sell.

With three fiber cable plants in the state, a crew here may well be installing cable made 50 miles away. The reels it came on, once empty, are best sold close by too.

Routes and regions

Few points in South Carolina are more than a few hours apart, which keeps freight cost down for lots inside the state. Lots in the Upstate often combine with reels in Charlotte, and Abbeville and Aiken are close enough to Augusta, Georgia that a trailer can cover both.

• Upstate: Greenville and Spartanburg on I-85, with I-26 heading northwest to Asheville. AFL's Duncan plant is here.
• Midlands: Columbia, where I-20, I-26 and I-77 meet. STL's Lugoff facility and Prysmian's Lexington plant are both nearby.
• Lowcountry: Charleston and its port at the end of I-26, plus the I-95 corridor inland.
• Pee Dee: Florence, where I-95 meets I-20, with farm country and long rural lines all round.
• Western Piedmont: Abbeville and Greenwood, off the interstates and closer to the Georgia line.

Weather on the coast

Hurricane season runs June to November, and the coast from Myrtle Beach to Hilton Head is exposed. Before a storm, loose empties in an open yard can roll or blow into fences; stood up and strapped they stay put. After a storm, restoration crews leave staging areas full of mixed empties, which is when a yard clearout makes the most sense.

Humidity is a year-round factor. Reels left flat in low, wet ground rot from the rim. Ones stood on gravel or dunnage stay sellable for years.

Send us a South Carolina lot

1. 01

   Split heavy from light

   Put fiber and building wire reels in one group and the big power reels in another. They load differently.

2. 02

   Measure

   Flange, traverse and drum in inches for each size. The reel stencil usually has all three.

3. 03

   Count and photograph

   A count per size, one stencil photo per size and a wide shot of the pile.

4. 04

   Describe the loading

   Forklift capacity and fork length matter for reels over 72 inches. Say if a crane is on site.