Tyson Subsidiary Cobb-Vantress Building $22M Feed Mill

Tyson Foods subsidiary and poultry R&D leader, Cobb-Vantress, announced it is building a new $22 million poultry feed mill in Laurens Country, South Carolina, leveraging upon the state’s growing poultry industry. Construction of the state of the art mill, which will be located in Joanna, is scheduled to begin in early 2016 and be completed by the middle of 2017.

This project marks Cobb’s third feed mill in the U.S., adding to the existing mills in Siloam Springs, Arkansas and Albany, Kentucky. The facility will have an initial production capacity of 1,200 tons per week and will supply feed to Cobb-Vantress’ grandparent breeder farms in South Carolina, North Carolina, and Georgia, and one great-grandparent farm in Georgia.

“We want to ensure that we have a long-term internal feed supply that will give us complete control over the consistency and quality of the end product,” Cobb-Vantress Director of World Technical Services Dr. Steve Bolden stated in a news release. “With the completion of the Joanna feed mill, we will internally produce all of our feed supply for pedigree operations through to grandparents.”

The facility will integrate the latest technologies including a ‘hygieniser’ that will heat-treat the feed ingredients before the pelletizing process, and will also include environmental control systems that will control air flow in order to eliminate cross contamination. The facility will also be a dedicated rail spur that will be used to transport supplies from production regions across the U.S.

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