Boar's Head will soon sink about $80 million into New Castle in the form of a new processing facility.
Months of hard work paid off, and the Florida-based meat specialists will build a new 150,000 square-foot plant on County Road 400 South at its intersection with Ind. 3, Economic Development President Corey Murphy told Henry County Commissioners at a Wednesday meeting.
“Boar’s Head, a leading provider of premium delicatessen meats and cheeses, announced plans to locate a new premium delicatessen product manufacturing and research facility here. The facility is expected to be operational by the spring of 2016, and will allow the company to produce premium turkey, ham and chicken delicatessen products,” Murphy said.
The company will employ 200, and potentially as many as 345 by 2019. The hiring of management associates is expected to begin in 2015. The company is looking forward to a long-term cooperative business partnership in Henry County, he added.
Boar’s Head is a private, family-owned company. According to its website at www.boarshead.com, “Since 1905, Boar’s Head has been a family business. In the beginning we had a very simple idea: Make the finest cold cuts possible. Nothing less. More than a century later, we remain committed to continuously improving our time-honored processes so that we can meet the unwavering standards of quality and service that our customers have come to expect — and deserve.”
When the company contacted local officials, they let it be known they were interested in locating somewhere between Terre Haute and Columbus, Ohio, along the I-70 corridor. They inspected more than 15 sites and narrowed their search to two locations in Indiana and one in Ohio.
Henry County received an inquiry in March from Boar’s Head’s site selection consultant who visited in April. An infrastructure planning meeting was conducted June 17. A week later, senior executives visited Henry County. Negotiations began in earnest.
The Henry County plant will be the first that the company builds from the ground up and will be located on a 64.7-acre parcel of land on the south side of 400 South.
“It’s great to be in a position to be able to respond to their site search and make a business case for them to locate here. We look forward to welcoming them. I think it’ll be a real nice fit for Henry County,” Murphy said, adding that an advance team doing preliminary site work could be in place before the end of the year, possibly as soon as mid October if all goes well.
A local incentive package that helped bring Boar’s Head to Henry County included a pledge of tax increment financing. The company will purchase a bond which has a 20-year term valued at $12.2 million. The company will pay property taxes with a portion returned to the company in the form of principle and interest payment on the bond.
The incentive package also included a phased-in tax abatement. This provides the company with an estimated savings of $5.5 million over a 10 year period. The Redevelopment Commission is prepared to transfer title on the 64.7 acres involved for $1, according to information provided by the EDC.
Boar’s Head benefited from the creation of a TIF district separate from the existing industrial park on 400 South. They also requested regulations and limitations be placed on other businesses that could locate around them, including mines, adult entertainment businesses, tattoo parlors, liquor stores, night clubs, check-cashing or payday loan businesses, petroleum or pesticide manufacturing or storage facilities, confined feeding operations, and sewage treatment or solid waste transfer facilities.
“They are very concerned about air quality and the quality of the area in which they plan to build,” Murphy said. Existing agricultural operations are not impacted, he added.