It’s been two years since Mar Jac Poultry first announced its plans to build an impressive feed mill in Franklin County. It’s been about a year since site work first began on the property in Spruce Pine. Now, work continues on the feed mill, as well as the hatchery, and the long-awaited industry is taking shape.

Most recently, a crew began pouring concrete at 8:30 a.m. March 27 to construct “the six-pack,” the storage silos. Concrete-pourers worked around the clock on a continuous pour – “even (March 27) in all the storms and lightning and hail, they were here (pouring concrete),” said project manager Keith Martin.

Photos by Alison James
Across the railroad tracks is an impressive view of the towering feed mill, where Mar Jac aims to begin operations in fall 2017.

Just down the road in the nearby industrial park, construction is also progressing on the hatchery, for which the company broke ground in November 2016.

On a wooden work desk atop the slowly rising silos, 100 people worked to keep the walls level and properly poured as concrete was mixed on site, dumped into a pumper truck and pumped up to the top of the six-pack for workers to transition from hopper, to wheelbarrow, to the form. Hydraulic jacks were used to slowly raise the work platform as the walls grew 1 inch every five minutes.

“This is an extremely fast, hard-curing concrete mix,” Martin said.

The storage facility will measure 140 feet. The adjacent tower is 170 feet tall.

The construction of the silos marks the final biggest phase of the project. “There’s still more pours to be done, more work to be done, but this is the big deal,” Martin said. A grinding room and a receiving room, for example, are two smaller phases left to be completed.

Franklin County’s operation is the third Mar Jac feed mill. As the newest mill, Martin said, it features updated a modern equipment and technology that will allow the mill to be as efficient and effective as possible.

“This one and the Georgia one will be identical,” Martin said. Identical, except “the Georgia mill only has one bay; this one has two bays … As far as the machinery, we’ll be able to run as fast with one machine that can make the feed as they can with two.”

Martin said Mar Jac hopes to do test runs in October and be fully operational by the end of the year. Although the company faced delays beginning construction, the timeline has continued as scheduled for the past year, Martin said.

“It’s exciting,” Martin said. “This is something you probably get to do only once in a lifetime.”

Martin said one thing Mar Jac has kept in mind throughout the construction process is being a good neighbor to the community, being open to hear people’s concerns and taking steps to address any problems brought to them.

“That’s just how we are. That’s Mar Jac. That’s how we do things,” Martin said. When construction began and traffic increased on Scharnagle, for example, Martin got some feedback about gravel trucks driving too fast on the rural road. “We posted speed limits and started sitting and watching,” Martin said. Additionally, “neighbors said something about the dust, so we got our own tanker truck in here and started wetting the dirt to keep the dust down, and things like that … When you’ve got this going on, and for some of these people it’s in their back yard, it helps to try to be available, open, honest. I just think people accept things and are more receptive to things if they know what’s coming than if they are surprised by it. If you wake up one morning and you have a 170-foot tower in your back yard, you’re not going to be real happy.”

For Martin, he enjoys coming out to the project and watching the progress.

“This will outlast us. What we’re building right here is going to be here for 50-plus years,” he pointed out. “So you’re sitting here looking at history.”

FCDA Director Sherye Price expressed her own excitement at seeing the project near fruition.

“When I first heard the name Mar Jac, it was around two years ago; from then to now, all the little steps we’ve taken – I mean, we’ve all met dozens and dozens of times,” Price said. “To go from those meetings in the conference room at my office to this – it’s a good feeling.”

Price said the capital investment from Mar Jac has reached the $60 million dollar range in Franklin County, representing a significant benefit to the local economy.