Koch Foods plans poultry plant expansion

Koch Foods is investing $15.9 million to expand a poultry plant in Gadsden, Alabama.

Roy Graber Headshot
Photo courtesy of Pas Reform
Photo courtesy of Pas Reform

Koch Foods is investing $15.9 million to expand a poultry plant in Gadsden, Alabama.

With the project, Koch Foods will add a production line. When the expansion is completed, Koch Foods will add 135 new jobs with an hourly pay of $14.83.

According to a report from the Gadsden Times, Koch Foods was awarded a 10-year-tax abatement from the Gadsden City Council for the project, and that abatement includes all state and local non-educational property taxes, and all non-educational construction-related transaction taxes.

David Hooks, director of the Gadsden-Etowah Industrial Development Authority, estimated that the Koch Foods expansion will generate about $83,000 in city occupational taxes, and the overall benefit for Gadsden over a 10-year period should be around $1.25 million.

Gadsden is located in Etowah County, and the poultry plant expansion represents the second project in the county that Koch Foods has initiated in recent history. In November 2019, the company was joined by state and local dignitaries to break ground on a new poultry feed mill in nearby Attalla. At the time of the groundbreaking ceremony, it was estimated that production at the new feed mill would begin in the fall of 2021. The Attalla mill will support the plant in Gadsden.

Once the expansion projects are completed, Koch Foods will become the second largest employer in Etowah County.

Koch Foods previously announced an intent to expand in Gadsden in 2018.

Headquartered in Park Ridge, Illinois, Koch Foods was founded in 1985 as a one-room chicken deboning and cutting operation and has since grown to become one of the world’s largest integrated poultry companies. According to the Poultry International Top Companies Survey, Koch Foods is the fifth largest broiler producer in the United States and the seventh largest in the world. In 2019, the company slaughtered 681.2 million broilers and processed 60.74 pounds of ready-to-cook chicken on a weekly basis.

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