Poultry plant to invest $30 million in reopening

DOUGLAS - Pilgrim's Pride, which has a number of plants in North Georgia, says it will hire as many as 1,400 local workers and invest $30 million to re-open its idled Coffee County chicken processing complex by January.

Company executives joined Gov. Perdue in Douglas on Wednesday to kick off the re-opening of the plant, which is expected to process about 1.3 million chickens a week by next summer.

The plant's presence in the region affects more than 3,700 jobs in Georgia, from hatcheries to feed mills, trucking operations and plant workers.

Pilgrim's Pride employs about 41,000 people and operates chicken processing plants in 12 states, Puerto Rico and Mexico. The company announced last month that it was closing its corporate offices as part of its consolidation with JBS USA.

(Copyright 2010 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)

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