Arkadelphia poultry plant to reopen

ARKADELPHIA - More than two years after Petit Jean Poultry closed a poultry processing plant in Arkadelphia, putting about 200 employees out of work, a California firm said on Monday it will reopen the plant and hire 172 workers.

Vikon Farms of Azusa, Calif., which specializes in processing chicken for the Asian market in the western United States, will invest $5.4 million to upgrade the Petit Jean plant, said Quan Phu, Vikon’s founder and chief executive officer.

“The timeline is I’d like to start tomorrow,” said Phu, who has worked in the poultry business for more than 20 years. “Unfortunately, we have to put in new equipment and renovate the plant a little bit.”

Vikon Farms also will operate a hatchery in Prescott, with fewer than 10 employees, and will contract with chicken growers in El Dorado and Union County to supply the Arkadelphia plant, Phu said.

The plant in the Clark County Commerce Park should begin operations in about six months, said Phu, who started Vikon Farms about seven years ago. Vikon Farms will hire the former plant manager at Petit Jean Poultry and will consider hiring former Petit Jean Poultry employees at the plant, Phu said.

Vikon Farms does not add hormones to chicken feed to promote faster growth, and the chickens are fed an all-grain diet, according to the company.

Vikon Farms will close a plant in California and move those processing operations to Arkadelphia, Phu said. The California plant is smaller than the Arkadelphia plant will be, but Phu declined to say how many employees it has.

Vikon Farms will pay an average of $12 to $13 an hour to skilled workers at the plant, said Shawnie Carrier, chief executive officer of the Arkadelphia Regional Economic Development Alliance. Including top executives and management, the plant’s annual payroll will be about $6.4 million, Carrier said.

“Today feels a whole lot better than April 2011, when we announced the closing of Petit Jean Poultry,” said Lewis Shepherd Jr., chairman of the board of the Economic Development Corp. of Clark County and a vice president at Henderson State University. “I had the opportunity to visit with many of the employees of that facility, some of whom it had been their only job. Some had been here since Day One, when the plant opened.”

The Petit Jean Poultry plant had a peak of 385 workers, but there were only about 200 employees when it closed, Shepherd said.

Danville-based Petit Jean Poultry operated the Arkadelphia plant as a deboning facility to supply chickens to a Tyson Foods plant in Hope. The Arkadelphia plant was the last one operated by Petit Jean Poultry.

Debbie Thomas, 48, worked for Petit Jean Poultry for 11 years before the plant closed in 2011. Thomas was at Vikon’s announcement Monday, sitting in the heat beneath a white tent.

She has done only some temporary work since then, said Thomas, who has an 11 year-old son.

“But they didn’t work out,” said Thomas, who worked as a deboner and in the sanitation department at the plant. “I’ve made it with unemployment and my family has helped me, and doing odds-and-ends jobs. But nothing like a permanent job. I am so very happy to know this plant is going to hire employees of the Petit Jean plant.”

The Vikon Farms plant jobs are the first new ones announced in Clark County since voters approved a half-percent economic development tax in February 2011.

Business, Pages 21 on 08/13/2013

Upcoming Events