It was good news for Dale County officials when they learned that more than $1 million has been awarded from the state in the form of an industrial access grant.
Dale County Commission Chairman Mark Blankenship said Friday that the $1,141,600 grant from the Alabama Department of Transportation’s Industrial Access Committee will be used for access and turning lane upgrades at County Road 18’s intersections at U.S. 231 and Alabama Highway 123.
Upgrades to those roads are required for the expected 200 to 300 trucks that will travel them daily to and from the new Wayne Farms Feed Mill.
Blankenship said that the mill is expected to be opened by January 2017 and the goal is to have the roads completed prior to that. “The engineering and design is being worked on as we speak,” he told those attending the Dale County Commission meeting Oct. 16.
“We’re getting a lot more than we would have if we had paved the roads on our own,” Blankenship said. “We were tickled to get the news.”
Blankenship said the county will pay $1.34 million, most of it federal funding, to assist with the new plant that Wayne Farm officials call the largest chicken feed mill in America.
The Georgia-based poultry producer and Dale County officials broke ground on the project in August. The feed mill is projected to output about 25,000 tons of feed per week in support of the company’s 42,000-square-foot Dothan fresh processing facility’s expansion.
Blankenship said the feed mill in Dale County is a $53 million investment on the property and an additional $60 million investment in building 165 chicken houses throughout the Wiregrass to support Wayne Farms’ surrounding operations.
About 48 of the 165 chicken houses would be on new farms, which results in about $1 million to $2 million invested in each farm.
The feed mill is expected to bring 88 additional jobs to Dale County.
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