The Cumberland County Board of Commissioners in North Carolina again has said no to pursuing a chicken processing plant to be built by Sanderson Farms that would have brought about 1,000 jobs to the area. Commissioners voted 4-3 Monday against a public hearing necessary to consider a $2.5 million incentive package for the company. Sanderson Farms was considering whether to build a $113 million plant in a county-owned industrial park. The commissioners previously voted against the project in September.

The commissioners voted Monday to move on from the project after they met behind closed doors with the staff of the Fayetteville Economic Development Alliance on the incentives package.  Residents who live near the industrial park have opposed the plant.

Pic Billingsley, director of development and engineering for Sanderson Fars, said the company is now weighting several options for a new site.  “We’ve got several different options available to us that we will be looking into,” Billingsley said.  “So, it would be premature for me to speculate on that at this point.”

Sanderson Farms had told economic development officials they would not locate to Cumberland Country without an incentive package comparable to those offered by other communities where the company has facilities.

The Cumberland County proposed required the company to spend $95 million on the project, hire 975 employees, with 60 percent of those employees from Cumberland Country, and not contract with poultry farms within a 10-mile radius of the production facility or within 1 mile of the Cape Fear River.  In return, Sanderson Farms would have received 50 percent grant back for property taxes paid over a 9-year period.  The incentives were estimated at $2.5 million.

Sanderson Farms most likely will be looking for a similar incentive package from surrounding counties.
“We try to be consistent in the way we do business in communities across the country,” Billingsley said.  “We feel like a project of this size with this many jobs and benefits, it requires this type of package.”

Sanderson had fielded interest from surrounding counties and Virginia as it begin negotiations with Fayetteville last year.  Sampson, Hoke, Robeson, and Harnett counties in North Carolina offered sites to Sanderson at that time.