South Carolina Shrimper Finds Easy Crusing with Assist of EDA Revolving Mortgage Fund Program

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James Bradley is a second-generation business fisherman from South Carolina. He’s the proprietor of Bradley’s Business Fishing, a family-owned enterprise on St. Helena Island. The corporate offers shrimp and different seafood objects to native eating places. Fishing has been a proud custom for the Bradley household, which has been within the seafood enterprise for greater than 100 years.

An in a position seaman who realized easy methods to shrimp and fish from his father, Bradley served as captain of the corporate’s shrimp trawler, Bradley’s Satisfaction, which might sail the Atlantic off the South Carolina coast. It served because the centerpiece of Bradley’s firm and its foremost income. After greater than 5 a long time in enterprise, nonetheless, he realized it was time to purchase a brand new boat.

Bradley contacted the Catawba Regional Council of Governments (CRCOG), an Financial Growth District in Rock Hill, and requested financing for a brand new trawler. CRCOG was prepared and prepared to help, having acquired a $9 million CARES Act restoration help grant from the Financial Growth Administration (EDA).

“The mortgage has helped to maintain the enterprise in the course of the downtime,” Bradley recalled. “Now that issues are getting again to regular after COVID, the client base has expanded and the demand is excessive, offering larger alternatives for extra gross sales.”

Awarded in July 2020, the grant established a Revolving Mortgage Fund designed to present loans of $35,000-$750,000 to coronavirus-impacted companies all through the state.

The $90,000 mortgage was finalized in March 2022. It enabled Bradley to accumulate a bigger shrimp trawler dubbed Moon Shadow. With an elevated catch and maintain space, it has allowed the enterprise to extend manufacturing.

“It’s nice having a bigger boat that’s in good situation and able to provide the purchasers with seafood and meet their wants,” Bradley mentioned.

This mortgage, and others financed by way of EDA’s award, have offered small companies in South Carolina, together with these in historically underserved communities, with essential hole financing obligatory to keep up day-to-day enterprise operations. They’ve bolstered South Carolina’s small enterprise neighborhood, the spine of the state’s economic system, as it really works to rebuild from the financial devastation wrought by the coronavirus pandemic.



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