Charoen Pokphand (USA) Inc., has been purchased by Keystone Foods LLC, a global manufacturer and distributor of poultry and beef products. The transaction was closed Friday, March 12, according to an official news release from the company's Huntsville office. The Baker Hill facility will operate under the name of Equity Group Eufaula Division, LLC. The new manager is Spence Jarnagin.
     Marvin Green, senior vice president, said it is anticipated that the cook plant will reopen at some point in the future. "We are evaluating the potential now to determine when that can be done," he said. CP closed the cook plant in the early part of 2003.
     A key component in purchasing the plant was the resolution of the facility's waste water treatment problems. An environmentally friendly wetlands system was developed and is nearing completion. "We expect the project to perform as designed when it is completed, which will be in the next several weeks," Green said.
     He added that the CP operation is similar in most ways to Keystone's other two integrated grow-out and processing operations. The CP processing capacity, however, is 25 percent less than each of the other two facilities. According to its corporate website, Keystone Foods is a global manufacturer of food products and a custom distributor to the food industry in 11 countries. Keystone operates 37 facilities  in  North  America,  Europe/Middle East, Asia and Australia.
     They are a major supplier to McDonald's and their manufacturing facilities supply more than 23,000 restaurants globally. Keystone's annual production of poultry products exceeds 900 million pounds and requires an integrated supply of more than 250 million birds per year. They also produce over 600 million pounds of beef products each year. In the 1960s the company achieved success with cryogenics, an innovative freezing technology which allowed for the development of a mass production and freezing system for producing hamburgers.
     Keystone developed the first chicken nugget at its manufacturing facility in Tennessee in the early 1980s and pioneered mass-produced, boneless, chicken nuggets in the food industry. The company's press release stated that "All normally scheduled production will continue with the company committed to full utilization of the processing hatchery, feed mill, and grow-out operations." CP opened the Baker Hill facility in 1988 and is the county's largest employer with approximately 1,200 employees and an annual payroll of over $25 million.
     There are approximately 80 regional contract poultry farms that provide live birds to the processing plant. These farms represent over $40 million in poultry houses, equipment and related investments. The facility is expected to process one million birds per week.