The city council of Fayetteville, North Carolina, approved a motion to offer $3.8 million in incentives to Sanderson Farms for a proposed chicken processing plant.
The council voted February 23 to approve the package in conjunction with $2.5 million in incentives approved by the Cumberland County Board of Commissioners one week earlier. Fayetteville is the Cumberland County seat.
There was no other discussion before the vote, the Fayetteville Observer reported, which caps a year of debate and study by city and county officials.
Even with the incentive packages offered by both the county and city, there is no guarantee that Sanderson Farms would locate its proposed plant in Cumberland County. Sanderson Farms has communicated with other counties in North Carolina, and reportedly told Cumberland County it was no longer interested in locating there after the county had earlier denied incentives to the company. Cumberland County changed its mind after November 2014 elections changed the membership of the commission.
Joe F. Sanderson Jr., chairman and CEO of Sanderson Farms, in a news release that coincided with the company’s release of its first quarter financial reports, mentioned that it would build its next poultry processing complex in North Carolina, but did not reveal where.
“We continue our due diligence on sites in North Carolina for our next poultry complex, and hope to complete that process soon,” Sanderson said.
