FAIRMONT, W.Va. — The doors of Prime 6, LLC were opened Tuesday afternoon for a visit from U.S. Senator Shelley Moore Capito and Treasurer Larry Pack.
The facility opened in the fall of 2025 with a high-performance gourmet charcoal as their primary project. Founder and CEO Riki Franco and her team did a $35 million transformation of the former Phillips Lighting manufacturing facility into a carbon processing facility.
“Manufacturing right here using West Virginia products to create charcoal for a myriad of uses we’re finding out,” Capito said.
Treasurer Pack noted Franco came to Charleston to meet with then-Governor Jim Justice with an idea in 2024. Now, that idea is evolving into supplying feedstock to the steel industry.
“To see the operations and see everything moving forward and the jobs coming to West Virginia—you came to West Virginia the first time with a plan, and to see it come to fruition is absolutely amazing,” Pack said. “We’ll make sure we share this with U.S. Senator Justice because he had a lot to do with this.”
Franco said the facility employs 45 people and the plant operates 7 days a week, 24 hours a day. Adding another product to offer industrial customers drastically changes the scale of operations on a much quicker timeline.
“I have to say we are two years ahead of ourselves,” Franco said. “So, we are bringing more people, creating more jobs, and hopefully we will continue to grow and expand into new markets.”
The Prime 6 entry into the steel production market comes due to a shortage of metallurgical coke. The wood-derived version performs just as well and has zero market volatility, making it very attractive in the industry. The margins for supplying steel manufacturers are also much better than selling high-performance charcoal on the retail market.
“It has very similar performance elements, and because it is a biogenic compound that comes from wood, it eliminates a lot of the emissions some of them are concerned with,” Franco said.
Franco has been especially pleased with the work ethic of the employees they have found in Marion County. She said that support from state and local government has made finding success a clear path.
“The success of the company is the success of the community and the workforce have,” Franco said. “And really West Virginia because at the end of the day it all needs to work together—it’s one big economy, and that’s what we’re hoping to build.”