The old Mount Vernon Mills property will soon have a new tenant. Hodie Meats, Inc., is setting up a meat processing plant at the site in Alto.
The plant will receive fresh meat products and custom cut, slice, dice, and season the meat products to customer specifications. The meat will be shipped in customers’ packaging and be sent out immediately after processing, according to a company representative. The plant expects to employ 40 to 50 people at startup and eventually expand to around 200 to 220 employees.
Hodie Meats will be located behind the main building of the old textile plant in a smaller facility that is just over 202,000 square feet. The start-up operation will originally use only about 45,000 square feet of the building for processing and, over the next year, incorporate the remainder of the building into the operation.
The company is currently accepting applications at the guard shack at the main entrance of the old Mount Vernon Mills facility at 2850 Gainesville Highway. Applications are being accepted from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. on weekdays.
The plant will run two shifts, from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. and 4 p.m. to 1 a.m. The first shift pays $22 an hour and the second shift pays $24 an hour, according to information at the facility.
The grand opening is anticipated for November 28th.
New business
Hodie Meats, Inc. is a new corporation. According to the Secretary of State’s office, it was formed in September 2022 and is headquartered in Watkinsville, Georgia.
During the Banks County Planning Commission meeting on October 4, Hodie Meats representative Eric Ayers said the plant will operate under U.S. Department of Agriculture standards and will be supervised by the USDA. Ayers said that there will be no smell at this facility. Wastewater from the plant will be contained and removed by tanker to an EPD-approved facility for processing until the onsite wastewater facility is modified to commission specifications, operational, and EPD-approved.
Scrap products from the plant will be packaged in containers and shipped to dog food processors.
Ayers says the company wants to hire locally and hopes to hire some of the employees who were displaced when the Mount Vernon Mills textile plant closed in 2020.
The Banks County Commission on October 11 approved the conditional use application forwarded by the planning commission.
The property is owned by Phoenix Alto Industrial Investors, LLC. and currently leases building space to Steel Cell and Tencate.
