Orange County spent months luring Japanese executives to locate a candy factory here — and now the county will spend millions in incentives to keep them in Mebane.
Steve Brantley, the economic development director for the county, said Orange County was at a competitive disadvantage compared to other U.S. sites considered by Morinaga America — the Japanese company building a 20-acre candy factory in Mebane.
“We had a site, but we needed an incentive to keep the company looking at us,” Brantley said. “Alone, we’re not enough. We still needed to have a site that is competitive.”
The site currently has no infrastructure. The landowner will apply to have it rezoned and annexed into the city of Mebane soon, according to county documents.
Orange County will spend about $575,000 to provide the site with water and sewer lines — infrastructure developments used to incentivize Morinaga to build in Mebane. A service road extension will cost the county another $100,000, county documents state.
The county will use the property tax revenues from the Morinaga factory to pay for the development incentives.
Brantley said the economic development from the factory will outweigh the costs of the incentives. The company’s initial employment of up to 120 jobs will create $3.4 million annual payroll and health benefits, and Morinaga will invest $48 million in North Carolina during the next three years.
The factory is slated to open in 2015 and will be the first of its kind in the U.S., the company said in a press release.
Brantley said Morinaga’s decision came down to the Orange County site and a location outside Atlanta.
