SPF announces $65.5 million expansion in Greenwood County
Symrise Pet Food announced a $65.5 million expansion at Tuesday’s Greenwood County Council meeting — growth that will span the next three years and bring 65 jobs to the county.
Diana Pet Food opened its North American headquarters at 5300 U.S. Highway 25 in 2007, and since rebranded as SPF. The company specializes in making flavor enhancers for pet foods.
“Based on my experience in two years and talking and working with the team, we really wanted to make that investment here in Greenwood County,” said Tim Lonc, North American General Manager at SPF. “Along with that investment obviously goes commitments we’ve made in the community, commitments in academia and technology. We’ve invested quite a bit in the last nine or ten months making sure this is the right place for us.”
Lonc emphasized SPF’s partnerships with the Humane Society of Greenwood and investments into Grace Street Park, the United Way of the Lakelands and contributions to the Greenwood Promise and Piedmont Technical College’s industrial skills programs.
Emon Satterwhite, SPF’s North American director of operations, said that before this expansion, the company worked to respond to community concerns about the odor their manufacturing processes produce. In the past two years, the company installed a $2 million equalization tank to help remove solid waste from water being sent to Ware Shoals for treatment.
Satterwhite said the company will improve its gas extraction process to help remove odors, along with using a new chemical treatment for wastewater, along with expansions to their productive capacity.
“We started this process about a year ago, 14 months,” Lonc said. “We’ve gone through the approval process over the last nine months. … Our plan is to get that work done fairly quickly and start construction hopefully, if everything goes well as far as materials, in 2022.”
Lonc said he expects the expansion will be complete in 2025. Greenwood County Economic Development Director James Bateman said SPF’s expansion will double its investment at the Hodges facility so far. He said the company exceeded its investment commitment since 2007 by more than $40 million and 90 jobs.
Bateman said he and county officials toured a wastewater treatment facility in Cary, North Carolina that used a similar process as what’s coming to the Greenwood facility to mitigate its odors. Residents near the plant there had no complaints about the odor, and council member Theo Lane said when he visited the wastewater facility at that plant, there was no discernible odor.
Tami Baber, Hodges town clerk, read a statement by Mayor Michael George regarding the expansion. He said though he’s been active and vocal about his residents’ complaints of odors from the facility, the company was responsive with public meetings to discuss and learn how to address those complaints. He joined the trip to the North Carolina facility and said he was impressed by the odor abatement efforts there.
“I’m hopeful today that we are closer than ever to putting all of this in the past,” George wrote. “I eagerly anticipate the day I can speak to council about something other than odors in northern Greenwood County.”
For the past 15 years, SPF has been a close partner for Greenwood County, said council member Edith Childs. She was grateful for their continued investment in the area, as was Lane, who said council took seriously the public’s environmental and quality of life concerns.
Council voted 6-0, with council member Mark Allison absent because of illness, to approve a fee-in-lieu-of-tax agreement with SPF North America for this project. The FILOT agreement waives property taxes for the project for 30 years, replacing it with a fee. The agreement locks the expansion’s millage rate at 6% of the assessed value, and includes a 35% special source revenue credit for the first five years and a 25% credit for the next 10.
In addition to voting on final approval of this economic development project, county council took their first actions on another titled Project River. This project is set to bring $37.95 million in capital investment and 300 new jobs, from a Minnesota corporation that has yet to be publicly named. Council approved an inducement resolution allowing the county to move forward with a FILOT agreement with this company, and had first reading of the fee agreement ordinance.
In other matters, council voted to spend funds on a new trash compactor for the landfill and a camera system for the Greenwood County Detention Center.
County Treasurer Steffanie Dorn said council put aside $375,000 earlier in the year from special appropriations to eventually spend on a trash compactor, and she is now “extremely concerned” about the prices she’s seeing. She asked council to allow $500,000 from the landfill enterprise fund to go toward securing a new compactor, though she said she hoped it wouldn’t take all of that money.
Public Works Director Rob Russian said bids for a new compactor are due April 27, and the county needs to be able to act quickly to purchase one to ensure they don’t have to rely on a backup compactor, which is in need of repairs. Council voted unanimously to approve the funds.
Council also unanimously voted to use more than $272,000 in unspent salary and benefits funds from the county jail, along with $35,000 from a sheriff’s office fund, to buy a new camera system for the jail. The system would include 131 cameras for the jail, sheriff’s office and the perimeter of both buildings, and would provide better-quality images and coverage to view areas of the jail that are currently blind spots.
In other business:
Council passed an ordinance setting the hours for Stockman Park and the Wilbanks Sports Complex, closing those parks from 11 p.m. to 6 a.m. daily.
The Hodges-Cokesbury Fire Department earned the Fire Safe S.C. community designation, the only department in Greenwood County to earn the distinction.
Dorn said her staff is working to present a draft budget to council by the end of next week. She said fine revenues in court are back up after the COVID-19 pandemic slowed that income, and while hospitality tax income increased 13% this March over March 2021, accommodations tax income unexpectedly dropped 8% compared to the same period last year. She said Capital Project Sales Tax revenues were up this past quarter, and the tax is set to collect near 100% of its expected revenues.
Originally Published by Index-Journal on:Apr 19, 2022
By DAMIAN DOMINGUEZ ddominguez@indexjournal.com