Another tax abatement is moving ahead in the City of Plymouth. Viking Paper Corporation plans to make $3.6 million in capital improvements, according to Viking Paper President Justin Mooter. “$2.1 [million] roughly is in building and track and $1.5 [million] in equipment,” he said. “That equipment will almost double our line speed and help us in the baking process, if you will. These substrates are very tough to put together. So it’s a longer machine with more heat and more pressure.”
Viking Paper Corporation began in Toledo, Ohio in 1981 and added its Plymouth facility in 1993. Mooter says the company specializes in triple-walled sheets for the corrugated box industry. “We’re out of space because we need a lot of roll stock room for all these different paper grades,” he explained. “Right now, we’re trucking almost four trucks, roughly, a week out of the Toledo facility and bringing it here. So the 50,000-square-foot addition will hold additional rolls, we’ll have three more truck bays, and we’ll have a ground-level door and then the railroad will actually come into our building and three additional train cars will be able to pull into the building here in Plymouth.”
The Plymouth Common Council took the first step in granting a tax abatement for the upgrades Monday by declaring the property to be within an Economic Revitalization Area. Meanwhile, the council also voted to finalize a tax abatement requested by Pretzels, Inc. The snack producer completed its purchase of the Marshall County Shell Building on September 15 and plans to begin operations there by March, 2017.
During a public hearing on the tax abatement Monday, Pretzels, Inc. CFO Craig Anderson said the new Plymouth facility will produce peanut-butter-filled pretzels. The company has been unable to make this popular product since its Canonsburg, Pennsylvania plant was destroyed by fire back in June. Anderson says the new plant will employ 25 employees by the end of next year, with long-range plans for up to 65 by 2020. “About $18 million total investment is what we’re forecasting right now, between now through 2018,” he said. “About $6 million of that is the build-out of the Commerce Street facility itself, in terms of prepping it and then another $12 million in equipment, which would include a second oven.”
The Plymouth Common Council passed a resolution confirming the declaration of the property as an Economic Revitalization Area and calling for an eight year, 100-percent tax abatement on real property and personal property improvements. City Attorney Sean Surrisi says the new Pretzels, Inc. facility will also benefit from a 2013 agreement between the city and the Marshall County Economic Development Corporation. “They are currently receiving a 10-year, 100-percent tax abatement, but that resolution called for, when the building was transferred to a new owner, that that would be converted to a 10-year tax abatement with a phase-in, where the new owner would step into the abatement at the year that MCEDC was currently on,” Surrisi said.
In addition to incentives from the City of Plymouth, Pretzels Inc. has also been offered up to $350,000 in conditional tax credits from the Indiana Economic Development Corporation.
