Tyson Foods to build new $300M plant in Tennessee

One of the world’s largest food companies, Tyson Foods (NYSE:TSN), announced on Monday that it will build a new chicken plant in Tennessee.

“This project will enable us to provide even more fresh chicken to consumers across the country,” said Tom Hayes, president and CEO of Tyson Foods, in a press release. “As one of the world’s leading protein companies, we continue to raise the world’s expectations of how much good food can do.”

The plant is expected to cost the company around $300 million and create more than 1,500 jobs. It will produce pre-packaged trays of chicken for sale at grocery stores, processing about 1.25 million birds per week, according to the company. The overall operation could generate as much as $150 million in economic benefit for the state.

Tyson expects to begin operations at the next plant in late-2019.

The Tennessee announcement comes as the food group put plans to construct a separate, state-of-the-art facility in Kansas on hold, over opposition from local residents. That plant was expected to cost $320 million and create 1,600 positions.

The seemingly warm welcome in Tennessee did not go unmentioned by Tyson executives on Monday.

“The [Tennessee] location is attractive to us because of the strong support we’ve received from state and local leaders, the existing industrial park and availability of labor, as well as access to feed grains produced in the region,” Doug Ramsey, group president of Poultry for Tyson Foods, said in a statement on Monday.

The new facility in Humboldt County will be Tyson’s fifth location in the state of Tennessee.

Tennessee is also gaining another big factory, as LG Electronics works on a new, 1 million-square-foot factory to build washing machines, scheduled for completion by the first quarter of 2019.