County board tables action on Allen Harim plans

Officials in Sussex County, Delaware, have postponed action related to Allen Harim Foods’ plans to use a former Vlasic pickle plant in Millsboro as the company’s new headquarters and a chicken deboning facility.

Photo courtesy of Allen Harim Foods
Photo courtesy of Allen Harim Foods

Officials in Sussex County, Delaware, have postponed action related to Allen Harim Foods’ plans to use a former Vlasic pickle plant in Millsboro as the company’s new headquarters and a chicken deboning facility.

Action on a special use exception for the 460,000-square-foot facility was tabled by the Sussex County Board of Adjustment so that a person opposed to the plan would have time to submit a follow-up letter and to solicit more comments from state agencies.

An attorney representing Allen Harim told the board the company is "going overboard” prove that the plans for the property have been “well thought out,” according to a report from Delaware Online.

Allen Harim purchased the facility from Pinnacle Foods in 2014. At the time, it has hoped to use the facility as a chicken processing plant. However, those plans never materialized and the building has since been mostly used as a storage facility.

But the company, in December 2017, announced its plans to move its headquarters from its present location in Seaford, Delaware, into the Millsboro building. Those plans also called for the facility to house a deboning operation in about 50,000 square feet of the facility, where chicken that has already been processed at its Harbeson, Delaware, processing plant will be deboned and repackaged for customers.

Other uses of the Millsboro building will include a consignment warehouse operation that will store boxes and other packaging materials from International Paper and other vendors that are used in the Allen Harim production process. 

Allen Harim hopes the office space portion of the building will be ready for occupancy by the first quarter of 2019.

Allen Harim Foods is the 20th largest broiler company in the United States. According to the WATTAgNet Top Poultry Companies Database, it slaughtered 1.67 million chickens on a weekly basis in 2017. Company brands are Allen Harim, Nature's Sensation, Oasis All Natural Chicken and private label.

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