New project coming to Taliaferro Co. to produce hundreds of new jobs

Tuesday, December 4, 2018

News 12 @ 6 O’clock / NBC 26 at 7

TALIAFERRO COUNTY, Ga. (WRDW/WAGT) -- A business breaks ground on an expansion in Crawfordville.

“Harrison Poultry has already started construction here in Taliaferro County this is where their newest feed mill will be and when it opens up they will create more than 100 new jobs.”

It’s dirt now but in less than two years the development should be complete.

“This is a huge impact for middle Georgia, it will initially be a 300-acre development on a feed mill that will generate around 18-thousand tons of feed mill per week,” says Wayne Tanner, Executive Chairman of the Board of Harrison Poultry.

Harrison Poultry is a company out of North Georgia building a new feed mill in Taliaferro County.

“It takes corn, primarily corn and soybeans with some other added ingredients and it will pound those ingredients into a meal that can be digested by the chickens at the grower houses.”

It's the biggest industrial park this county has ever seen creating 236 new jobs in the county just over the next two years. That's a lot for a county with a population of 1600 people.

“It'll mean everything to our community, it'll be jobs, people have to leave here to get jobs so hopefully our population will stop declining,” says Jackie Butts, Chairman of the Taliaferro County Development Authority.

It could even make a difference outside of Taliaferro.

“I'm sure that they will employ people from the surrounding counties, our workforce is not that large so we will depend on the surrounding counties to bring in people to work,”

And the construction alone is already affecting local business.

“Even now without local restaurant and one or two stores that we have here, they're utilizing the stores, the workers so we're already seeing an impact.”

But it’s only the beginning of Harrison Poultry bringing more business to rural Georgia.

“The future plans include a new hatchery at this location and also a fully integrated processing plant"

“If you look at the longterm effect it'll have over a 200 million dollar investment alone in Taliaferro county"

Harrison Poultry plans to open their new feed mill in mid-2020.

TALIAFERRO COUNTY, Ga. (WRDW/WAGT) -- A major economic development industrial project is making its way to Taliaferro County.

A groundbreaking ceremony will take place Tuesday in Crawfordville for Harrison Poultry Feed Mill and Hatchery. It's a new facility that is expected new jobs for Taliaferro and Barrow County.

The company says a study projects a new job total in Taliaferro County to be 236 and that Barrow County will eventually realize a net gain of 158 new jobs.

The groundbreaking is scheduled to begin at 4:00 p.m. at A. H. Stephens State Park at 1:00 p.m.