Southeastern Kentucky Rehabilitation Industries, or SEKRI, is close to adding approximately 100 jobs at their facility in Cumberland.

SEKRI Director of Outside Sales Mike Anderson said SEKRI facilities in Cumberland and Pineville will be utilized to make tents, some of which will be used by the military.

“The board hired me to go out and find some non-traditional type of accounts,” Anderson said. “I went to a trade show in Louisville…and I ran into a company up there called LiteFighter. They were making one-man survival tents, and they are selling them to some military units.”

Anderson said they began the process of deciding if LiteFighter and SEKRI were a good match.

“We started working on it in early October,” Anderson said. “We signed a deal with those folks in January and we’re beginning the process of ramping up to produce up to 2,000 of their one-man survival tents per week.”

According to Anderson, it will be a two-fold operation.

“You’ve got an inner tent, and then you’ve got a rainfly,” Anderson said. “We’re producing the rainfly and the accessory bags in the Pineville location, and we’re doing the inner tent in our Cumberland location.”

According to the SEKRI website at http://www.sekri.org, SEKRI, Inc. “was established in Corbin, Kentucky in 1971 for the purpose of serving people with mental and physical disabilities. At that time, there were virtually no employment opportunities in Southeast Kentucky for people with significant disabilities. Various government agencies and school systems began referring individuals with disabilities to SEKRI to learn basic work skills. SEKRI started creating jobs through the Javits-Wagner-O’Day Program (JWOD) in 1984. This program, renamed the AbilityOne Program in 2007, coordinates government purchases of products and services provided by non-profit agencies whose workforce is comprised of a minimum of 75% disabled individuals. In 1993 SEKRI moved into a new 30,000 square foot facility where the organization began to produce sewn products for the US Military. By 1996 SEKRI’s manufacturing operations for military apparel had grown to $1.8 million in annual sales.”

Anderson explained three out of every four SEKRI production workers have mild to severe disabilities.

“Any kind of disorder that’s out there, we can work with them,” Anderson said. “Because of that, we get government work through the AbilityOne and Source America programs. But, this is a totally different situation, it’s an outside that area type of account. They (LiteFighter) are a company that was looking for some contract manufacturing and we were able to provide what they were looking for.”

Anderson said this contract should add up to 100 new jobs at the Cumberland location, as well as approximately 50 in the Pineville facility.

“Overall, it’s going to provide over 200 jobs in the two locations,” Anderson said.

Anderson said they expect to begin production this week, eventually ramping up to produce approximately 2,000 tents per week.