Wedding DJ at Freudenberg Performance Materials, LP in Candler, NC

The Space

Freudenberg Performance Materials operates a manufacturing facility in Candler that traces back to 1928, when the American Enka Co. was established there as a base for the growing American textile industry. What started as a rayon yarn plant shifted to producing nylon 6 in the 1950s, and the site has stayed an active manufacturing operation through several ownership changes since.

Enka was acquired by Low and Bonar in the mid-2000s, and the Freudenberg Group acquired those assets in 2020, folding the Candler plant into a company whose nonwoven technology dates to 1938, when it developed Viledon as a synthetic substitute for leather. Freudenberg Performance Materials itself formed in 2015, when the company’s Nonwovens and Politex business groups merged, so the name on the building is newer than the plant’s history inside it.

Capacity & Layout

No guest capacity is on record for this facility, and none should be invented: it is an active manufacturing plant, not a venue designed around seated events. What is known is scale of a different kind, about 180 people work at the Candler location, part of a Freudenberg Group workforce of roughly 50,000 spread across 33 manufacturing sites in 14 countries, which gives a sense of the operation this building is part of.

The plant produces about 22 million pounds of yarn and 100 million square yards of fleecing material each year, output that requires the kind of open, high-capacity floor space built for industrial equipment rather than banquet seating. Any event held here works inside a working plant’s footprint, not a room designed from scratch for guests.

Amenities

This entry does not carry amenity details in the usual sense, no bar package, no built-in catering kitchen, because Freudenberg’s Candler site was not built with private events in mind. What it does have is the character of a real, active manufacturing operation, one supplying materials to the building and civil engineering, healthcare, and apparel industries, rather than a rented backdrop dressed up to look industrial.

That distinction matters for anyone picturing the day: this is not a converted warehouse styled for events, it is a working plant with production still running, part of a global operation with 33 manufacturing locations in 14 countries. Whatever amenities were arranged for an event here were brought in around that reality, not built into the building itself.

Location & Getting There

The Candler facility sits west of Asheville, on a site with roots back to 1928, when American Enka chose the location as a base for expanding into the American textile industry. Ownership has changed hands more than once since, from Enka through Low and Bonar to Freudenberg’s acquisition in 2020, but the plant itself has stayed in the same place through all of it.

Getting there means arriving at a working industrial site rather than a dedicated event venue, so guests should expect the setting to read as a real manufacturing plant, not a themed space built to resemble one. For a DJ, that means setting up in a facility built around heavy equipment and open floor space rather than acoustics, so sound has to be managed actively rather than relying on a room already built for it.