Carolina Carports, a maker of metal products that has a plant in northern Decatur County, is open, but the office operations had been transferred to North Carolina.

During last week’s Development Authority meeting, Rick McCaskill, the authority’s executive director, said the plant was shutting down.

However, when he learned that the plant is in fact open, he expressed relief saying that it was “great news” in light of Decatur County’s climbing unemployment numbers.

His original information was based on a memo dated Jan. 26 that in essence said Carolina Carports submitted information to the Department of Labor’s local office indicating a loss of 12 jobs effective Jan. 22 “due to closing of plant.”

However, representatives with Carolina Carports Inc. said that the plant hasn’t shut down.

“Carolina Carports Inc.’s Georgia location is still open and serving southern Georgia, southern Alabama and Florida with quality metal products,” Heather Smith, corporate office manager, wrote in an e-mail to The Post-Searchlight. “We did in fact recently re-locate our office operations to our corporate headquarters in North Carolina in an effort to provide better service to our customers and dealers. However, we still maintain a full shop and sales staff still operate from our Colquitt facilities.”

Smith continued, “Deliveries to southern Georgia, southern Alabama and Florida are loaded and processed at this division. Our office operations are managed from our North Carolina corporate headquarters.”

Carolina Carports’ Decatur County operation is located at 2465 Colquitt Hwy., near Eldorendo. It is part of Carolina Carports operation, and if you dial the local number listed in the phone book, it will transfer you to the North Carolina office.

The company was founded in 1997, and it manufactures metal products and has divisions in seven states.