Simmons Prepared Foods has announced it will build a $300 million chicken facility in Arkansas, creating 1,500 new jobs.
Located in Benton County, the site will produce fresh and frozen chicken products for retail and restaurant customers with capacity to sell approximately 850 million pounds of poultry meat annually at full production.
It is expected that operations will begin in 2019 and Simmons aims to bring total employment at the plant to over 2,300 people by 2022.
The company said the design will feature ‘modern production facilities and contemporary office space supported with best-in-class environmental technologies’.
Simmons Prepared Foods, an affiliate of Simmons Foods, is a farm to fork poultry producer headquartered in Siloam Springs, Arkansas. It operates three hatcheries and two feed mills which supply nearly 300 independent poultry growers and over 20 company-managed farms which raise approximately 200 million birds per year.
The company’s six processing plants produce 750 million pounds of finished product per year for customer brands around the world.
Simmons Foods CEO Todd Simmons said: “We’re thrilled to bring this project to our community and are grateful for the cooperation from the Cities of Decatur and Gentry, local officials, Arkansas Economic Development Commission and the State of Arkansas.
“This announcement comes just two months after the company held a ribbon-cutting at its new pet food ingredient facility in Siloam Springs, which goes to show the faith they have in the area’s workforce and their commitment to the state. We competed with both Oklahoma and Missouri for this project, and I’m proud to say we won.”
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