U.S. egg producer Hillandale Farms has listed 600-700 acres of its Turner, Maine, facility for sale and has requested that the property be rezoned.
The property is listed for sale for US$1.6 million and is currently in a district that only allows the land to be used for egg production, according to news outlet Sun Journal. Currently, the producer only utilizes 300-400 acres of the property.
If the rezoning is approved at the town’s April 6th meeting, it would eliminate the current agricultural zoning and allow the land to be used for other activities, such as agriculture or residential lots.
Since Hillandale bought the farm in 2015, it has scaled down production by approximately two thirds to align with its customer’s needs, according to President of the farm location Steve Vendemia. The facility currently houses 480,000 birds and employees 45 workers. In 2015, when Hillandale began operations there, the farm housed 2.3 million birds.
Hillandale is evaluating the facility’s profitability quarterly and currently has no plans to close the farm, despite the shipping costs needed to transport poultry feed there from the Midwest. The stores the farm currently serves are in Maine and New Hampshire.
According to WATT Global Media’s 2024 Top U.S. Egg Producer Rankings, Hillandale Farms is the fourth largest egg producer in the country with 18.75 million layers and production facilities in the Northeast, Midwest and Southeast U.S.
The producer suffered a fire in 2023
In 2023, one of Hillandale Farms’ Connecticut facilities caught fire. The fire killed approximately 100,000 layers; however, no firefighters or employees were injured.
The house that caught fire was 300 to 400 feet long and two stories high and was not able to be saved. The remaining 13 layer houses were unaffected and operations continued as normal the following day.
