Easley's Comatrol Named One of Best Places To Work in SC

An Easley-based business has been named one of South Carolina's Best Places to Work.

Comatrol was ranked twelfth on the list of the state's best places to work in the small to medium (15-249 employees in SC) division

The Best Places to Work in South Carolina list is a joint effort from the South Carolina Chamber of Commerce, Best Companies Group and SCBIZ News.

"South Carolina is home to some of the best places to work in the nation. Congratulations to these innovative companies that are setting the example as superb organizations for our state's workforce to prosper," said Otis Rawl, president and chief executive officer of the South Carolina Chamber of Commerce.

Comatrol manufactures hydraulic valves for primarily the mobile hydraulic market, according to plant manger Derek Bailey.

“That would be agricultural equipment, road building equipment, mining, all sorts of industries utilize our products on their machines, to perform the movements within their machine to do work,” Bailey said.

John Deere, Caterpillar and CMH are some of the company's larger customers, Bailey said.

“We also serve some industrial markets,” he said.

“Globally, Comatrol is a $100 million business,” Bailey said. “We're part of the Sauer Danfoss group, which is our parent company, and they are around a $2.1 billion company globally.”

The Easley Comatrol group employs around 220-230 employees.

Comatrol and Sauer Danfoss share the same plant building.

“Both of our groups are together and we have around 330 employees within that whole Sauer Danfoss group,” Bailey said.

The Comatrol division was created as a standalong business.

“Since July, it was two years we've been a standalone portion of the Sauer Danfoss group,” Bailey said .

The company is growing, he said.

“It's been pretty challenging with the economy,” Bailey said. “We're a global company, so we do feel the effects of maybe the European markets or the APAC markets but overall, we are growing the company.”

Senior Learning Specialist Kaye Davis said Comatrol had done an internal survey of its employees about a year ago.

“Our scores were so high, our employees were already so engaged and doing a lot of benchmarking, we realized we do a lot of things really well, so that's why we decided to submit our company for the award.”

Here is the complete list of Best Places to Work Winners.

For Small/Medium Employers (15-249 employees in SC), the rankings are:

1
Geocent, LLC

2
SPARC LLC

3
VC3, INC.
4
Clarke & Company Benefits/McLaughlin Smoak & Clarke Benefits

5
Benefit Controls

6
Human Technologies, Inc.

7
Palmetto Citizens Federal Credit Union

8
EDENS

9
SCRA

10
O'Neal, Inc.

11
Rhythmlink International, LLC

12
Comatrol

13
Environmental Express, Inc.

14
C. F. Evans & Company, Inc.

15
Scott and Company LLC, Certified Public Accountants

16
Rosenfeld Einstein, A Marsh & McLennan Agency LLC Company

17
First Reliance Bank

18
CMT, Inc.

19
Barling Bay, LLC

20
Levelwing

For Large Companies (250 or more employees in SC), the rankings are:

1
Life Cycle Engineering

2
Edward Jones

3
Elliott Davis, LLC

4
Continental Tire the Americas

5
McAngus Goudelock & Courie

6
Safelite Auto Glass

7
Total Quality Logistics

8
SYNNEX Corporation

9
MARS Petcare

10
Colonial Life

11
Palmetto Health

12
Sage Automotive Interiors

13
Blackbaud, Inc.

14
Womble Carlyle Sandridge & Rice, LLP

15
Select Health of South Carolina

16
InterContinental Hotels Group

17
NBSC, a division of Synovus Bank

18
First Citizens Bank

19
Charleston Water System

20
Benefitfocus