Company will invest $1.9 million in South Carolina project.
Quality Farms, headquartered in Dayton, Ohio, has announced plans to invest around $1.9 million to build a project in Mullins, South Carolina, which will convert wine and beer waste into fuel-grade ethanol and livestock feed.
Founded in 2011, Quality Farms was established to provide beer, wine and spirit product destruction and recycling services to the beverage industry. To date in 2014, Quality Farms’ existing Ohio operations have processed more than 12.4 million pounds of product, successfully diverting materials initially bound for landfills. The company expects its South Carolina operations to yield similar results.
The company says that it is able to reclaim and recycle more than 90 percent of the unusable total beverage product it takes in.
The facility will be opened in a 300,000 square-foot building that will house equipment to break glass, crush aluminum and bale the packaging materials for shipping or pickup. This process results in a significant reduction of waste currently directed to landfills, according to the company. While Quality Farms will lease space and operate out of the same facility as another business, the two companies are not related.
South Carolina’s Coordinating Council for Economic Development has approved a $75,000 Rural Infrastructure Fund Grant to be used as reimbursement for the costs of real property improvements.
Richard Grow, president of Quality Farms, says, "We investigated several locations in the Southeast for our expansion. However, because of the energy and excitement of the economic development director in Marion County, we chose to locate in Mullins. Because of the positive responsiveness, I feel we can foster a long-term partnership with the community for future success and growth.”
“Our recycling and our agribusiness industries are growth sectors, and this is a company at the intersection of both. South Carolina has all of the ingredients for small businesses to be successful, and I look forward to watching Quality Farms thrive in our state,” says South Carolina’s Commerce Secretary Bobby Hitt.
Grow says Quality Farms’ process includes depackaging the alcohol, baling the recyclables, and then converting the liquid into either ethanol or shipping it to an anaerobic digester. “Our product works well with anaerobic digesters,” Grow says.
