Company investing $18 million
BENTON, Ky. (Sept. 21, 2016) — Ground was broken in Benton on the Independent Stave Co. (ISC) $18 million mill that will create 47 jobs. The mill will produce barrel staves for the bourbon and whiskey industries. The project will provide the company with additional production capacity and flexibility.
ISC will construct a 50,000-square-foot, state-of-the-art stave mill on a 48-acre property in Marshall County. Company executives expect to complete the project by July 2017. The company’s Morehead Wood Products mill in Rowan County opened in September 2015. Since then, it added second and third shifts, increasing employment to more than 100.
The Morehead mill supplies—as will the new Marshall County mill—the company’s cooperages in Lebanon and Missouri. The new stave mill will increase the number of barrels the cooperages craft each year. The company’s previous sourcing of white oak logs from Marshall County factored into its decision to select the site.
ISC, a family-owned cooperage company, reaches distilleries, wineries and breweries in more than 40 countries. The Boswell family founded the company in 1912, first as a domestic supplier of staves, and today as a cooperage company crafting a wide range of barrels and oak products. More than a century since its founding, ISC still embraces the core values of family, innovation, community and hard work.
The company owns six stave mills in total—one in northeastern France—and five American oak mills. Those include the Morehead facility, two in Missouri, one in Indiana and one in Ohio. ISC also owns and operates six cooperages. In 1983 it purchased the Lebanon cooperage, known as Kentucky Cooperage, where it currently employs 400 people.
To encourage the investment and job growth in the community, the Kentucky Economic Development Finance Authority (KEDFA) in March preliminarily approved American Stave Co., a subsidiary of ISC, for tax incentives up to $750,000 through the Kentucky Business Investment program. The performance-based incentive allows a company to keep a portion of its investment over the agreement term through corporate income tax credits and wage assessments by meeting job and investment targets.
Additionally, KEDFA approved the company for up to $200,000 in tax incentives through the Kentucky Enterprise Initiative Act (KEIA). KEIA allows approved companies to recoup Kentucky sales and use tax on construction costs, building fixtures, equipment used in research and development and electronic processing.
The company can also receive resources from the Kentucky Skills Network. Through the Kentucky Skills Network, companies are eligible to receive no-cost recruitment and job placement services, reduced-cost customized training and job training incentives. Last year, the Kentucky Skills Network trained more than 84,000 employees from more than 5,600 Kentucky companies.
Add Comment