North Carolina’s Golden LEAF Foundation has awarded $1.12 million in grants to two municipalities in the state where Sanderson Farms plans to build.
The foundation is awarding $820,000 to St. Pauls, where the company plans to build a poultry processing plant, and $300,000 to Lumberton, where a chick hatchery will be built, according to a report from The Robesonian. The grants will be used to pay for water and infrastructure needs to accommodate the Sanderson Farms projects. Both communities are in Robeson County.
Sanderson Farms announced in March that it has selected St. Pauls for the location to build a plant and wastewater treatment facility in St. Pauls. The plant will have the capacity to process 1.25 million birds per week for the big bird deboning market. At full capacity, the complex will employ about 1,100 people, will require about 100 contract growers, and will be equipped to process and sell approximately 500 million pounds of dressed poultry meat annually at full production. The company is investing about $139 million in the project.
Sanderson Farms is the third largest poultry company in the United States. According to the WATT Global Media Top Companies Database, the company produced 58.8 million pounds of ready-to-cook chicken on a weekly basis in 2014.
