Gulf Coast Shelter celebrated the ribbon cutting of its new Laurel sales office Friday. The facility, located at 1964 Highway 84 East, employs about 30 workers included six traders and an additional 20 in the yard.

Gulf Coast Shelter, headquartered in Daphne, Ala., offers a large inventory of building supplies such as oriented strand board, plywood, paneling, roofing, flooring, doors, windows, molding and plumbing. The company also produces crane mats for pipeline construction at its Laurel facility.

“We ship by truck and rail, as close as 20 miles and as far away as North Dakota,” said Mark Aplin, Laurel yard foreman. “We buy our raw materials from local sawmills.”

Aplin said the company is currently looking for people with pipeline experience while it expands locally. Todd Rowell heads up GCS’ crane mat division.

“On the first day, we produced six mats,” he said. “Now on a single shift, we produce 180 mats or 12 truckloads.”

Gulf Coast Shelter, which has been in the Laurel area for two years, occupies the former City Salvage facility. The Laurel and Daphne, Ala., offices are a division of Shelter Products, which has been based in Portland, Ore., since the 1980s.

During the ribbon cutting, John Austin, president of Gulf Coast Shelter and a Waynesboro native, said the firm has moved several times in Laurel and is “real happy to have a good home now.”

“We’ve received a lot of local support, and we’re right here in the hub of Laurel,” he said. “I wish everybody the best.”