050521 Perdue Tennessee Plant to Receive $17M Expansion

Poultry company Perdue Farms announced a $17 million expansion planned for its processing facility in Putnam County, Tennessee that will mean about 400 jobs there.

The company said it will upgrade its facility to support a new processing line to increase production of its sliced, deli-style meats.

The new line, which retains jobs for an unspecified number of workers and adds new ones, is expected to begin operation in mid-November. The Middle Tennessee plant, about 85 miles east of Nashville, employs 1,806 workers. The head count is expected to exceed 2,000 by November.

"Any time we talk about adding new jobs in Monterey, we get excited," Monterey Mayor Ken Wiggins said in a released statement.

For the past two years, manufacturing employment in Middle Tennessee has been on the rise, bucking the years-long national trend of seeing such jobs move overseas. The rate of manufacturing employees in the region has grown 3.8% since early 2003.

"I'd say the Middle Tennessee area is a hot spot for these sorts of expansions," said Murat Arik, associate director of the Middle Tennessee State University Business and Economic Research Center. "The cost of doing business here compared to other MSAs (metropolitan statistical areas) is lower. The business climate here is really better than many MSAs in the country."

The state and the nation have suffered from declines in manufacturing that date to 1999. In 1992, 22% of all jobs in Tennessee were in manufacturing, falling to 15.5% in 2003, a loss of nearly 80,000 jobs, according to data compiled by the Center for Business and Economic Research at the University of Tennessee.

Manufacturing jobs in the state, however, are expected to be back in the black by 2006.

The Perdue expansion includes construction of a 16,000-square-foot addition to the plant and conversion of 15,000 square feet of existing space. The completed operation will be able to produce up to 35 million pounds of sliced meats per year.

The company had considered cutting two of its lines at the plant, resulting in job losses, said George Rawlston, vice president of prepared foods operations for Perdue Farms. The company instead opted to expand and make the transition to producing more sandwich-style meat - the fastest-growing segment in the food-service industry.

The state of Tennessee provided more than $1.2 million in training assistance for new and existing employees. Additional state support came through job tax credits, applicant screening services and a recruitment campaign.

Businesses in Tennessee that offer a minimum of 25 new full-time jobs and additional capital investment of $500,000 can get up to $4,500 per new full-time employee.

"Because the state and local governments responded so quickly to the company's concerns, we were able to keep hundreds of jobs in Tennessee," Gov. Phil Bredesen said in a statement.

The local community offered tax abatements totaling $501,716 and onsite wastewater improvements totaling $37,500.

"They've really pitched in," Rawlston said.

After employees have been with Perdue for 90 days, they make an average of $9.99 per hour, he said.

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