The conceptual site plan for a new company preparing to build a facility in Peachtree City was tabled at Monday night’s Planning Commission meeting.
Calpis Inc., a Japanese company that produces animal feed additives of probiotic product in powered form will be building their facility on Dividend Drive off Highway 74 and TDK Blvd. The product material is a defatted soy bean base through the process of culturing drying and grinding for a particle reduction and then pneumatically conveyed via a powder handling system for the product packaging.
According to city planner David Rast, the facility is a joint operation between the Fayette County Development Authority and the State Economic Development Council.
“They selected Peachtree City over a few other sites.”
Calpis, he noted, is well-known in Japan for their process of producing powder from soybeans and probiotics as an additive to chicken feed.
“They culture, dry and grind and the powder is shipped out.”
Calpis’ plan for the $15 million facility shows a 11.84-acre campus with a 36,370 square-foot production building and a 10,136 square-foot office building. There is also the possibility of expansion of the manufacturing facility and the company hopes to employ up to 42 people.
“We’ve had ongoing dialogue with fire safety and the plans will be refined as they are submitted and reviewed. One of the things they’re doing,” said Rast, “is in the area between Dividend and the building itself, they’re going to keep a 150-foot tree save area.
“They’re not clearing away and they’re leaving it vegetated. The building is straightforward.”
Commissioner Lynda Wojcik was concerned if there would be an odor emanating from the building.
“When you drive on 85, near the Purina plant, there’s a definite odor.”
Rast said he didn’t believe it was a problem and, replying to a question about hazardous waste from commissioner Robert Napoli, there would be no problem with that either.
“The water is pretreated before leaving the building.” Rast said the Peachtree City Water and Sewer Authority was required to do a different monitoring on the system.
“The applicant is aware of that and is working with WASA.”
Commissioner David Conner asked the matter be postponed for two weeks - to the special called meeting on January 28- so Rast could find out if there needed to be any odor control methods or if there was a way for the commission to mandate that as part of the approval. |
