The Peco Foods chicken processing plant in West Point will add more than 200 jobs to its existing 44 when the addition of a par-fry facility is complete. Par-frying (short for partial frying) is the first step in the frying process and the food is frozen, packaged and distributed afterward.
The plant is still new to the Golden Triangle; construction began in 2018 and full operations started in June 2019. The $40 million investment included $3 million in state funding.
Golden Triangle LINK CEO Joe Max Higgins said in 2018 that the plant will have a total of 300 jobs by the time it has been open for three years.
The 185,000 square-foot facility is located on 37 acres of land at the former Americold freezer facility on West Church Hill Road. The par-fry expansion began in late 2019 and will add about 130,000 square feet. Construction on the par-fry expansion has continued during the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic, plant manager Jordan Townsend said.
“Our top priority is the health and safety of our team members, (and) we look forward to finishing up construction and beginning our hiring process later this year,” he said.
All Peco employees companywide are wearing face masks at all times and their temperatures are checked before entering the facilities. The company has staggered shift and break times to minimize interpersonal contact and has been cleaning and sanitizing all surfaces more frequently.
Headquartered in Tuscaloosa, Peco employs more than 7,000 people at 13 locations in Mississippi, Alabama and Arkansas. It has seven locations in Mississippi — West Point, Brooksville, Canton, Sebastopol, Philadelphia, Lake and Bay Springs — ranging from processing plants to hatcheries and feed mills.
The West Point facility is a further processing plant, meaning it produces “value-added products like chicken nuggets and breaded filets” rather than plain processed meats. The further processing plant in Brooksville employs 275 people, and all seven Mississippi locations have about 3,600 employees.
Tess Vrbin was previously a reporter for The Dispatch.
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