the biggest such project landed by Michigan since Gov. Rick Snyder targeted food processing as a jobs-growth sector, Clemens Food Group, of Hatfield, Pa., plans to build a $255-million pork processing plant in Coldwater that will employ 810 workers. The Michigan Strategic Fund approved $12.5 million in Community Development Block Grant funds Tuesday for the city of Coldwater for infrastructure improvements, land acquisition, workforce development and on-the-job training for the plant. Clemens Food CEO Doug Clemens, in an interview with the Free Press, said he aims to have the new Coldwater plant operating by late 2017, and that processing of hiring and training employees will begin in the next six months. Entry-level production jobs will pay about $13 an hour, but a wide range of higher-skill management and technical positions will also be available, he said. Michigan took an unusually proactive approach in courting Clemens Food, a sixth-generation family-owned outfit founded in 1895 that now has 2,200 employees, nearly all based in eastern Pennsylvania. Michigan lost its last major pork processing plant when Thorn Apple Valley shut down its Detroit slaughterhouse and let go 1,000 workers in 1998, a year before collapsing into bankruptcy. Since then, Michigan farmers, who produce more than 2 million market hogs per year, have shipped them out of state for processing. Snyder, in his first State of the State speech in January 2011, made growing the states agriculture industry a point of emphasis, pointing to the creation of value-added jobs in processing the states crops and farm animals as a growth opportunity. Late in 2012, the Michigan Department of Agriculture and Rural Development (MDARD) awarded a $100,000 grant to a group of pork producers for feasibility study on locating a pork processing plant in the state. They wound up focusing on Clemens Food, an integrated producer of pork products sold under the brand names Hatfield, Prima Porta, Premium Reserve, Nicks Sausage, Reds Legendary and DRouco Foods. Clemens said his firm had steadily grown sales beyond its core markets in the Northeast and was contemplating an expansion of production but had not decided whether to add capacity at its home base or in other states. Hed been approached by other states in the past, including Ohio, but MDARD worked with the Michigan Economic Development Corp. and the Branch County Economic Growth Alliance (BCEGA) on a proposal for a greenfield site in Coldwater that hooked him. For Coldwater, in Branch County near the Indiana and Ohio borders, the plan will be a huge boost to the local economy. Its a home run for us, said Lisa Miller, executive director of the BCEGA. She said the largest local private employers now are a Wal-Mart distribution center with 1,000 workers and Asama Coldwater Manufacturing, a 400-person plant that makes brakes for Honda.
Posted on: Fri, 02 Jan 2015 17:47:35 +0000
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