LITTLE ROCK — Tyson Foods Inc. is hiring about 60 people to work at a prepared-foods plant in south Fayetteville, the company said Thursday.
The hourly jobs will be added in the coming weeks and will pay $11 an hour, including benefits, said Worth Sparkman, a spokesman for the world’s largest meat marketer.
The work-force expansion coincides with the completion of a $7 million renovation at the South School Avenue facility, the Springdalebased meat marketer said in news release Thursday.
Two additional production lines will produce a new item for a national food service customer, the news release said. Sparkman declined to provide additional information about the new product or customer.
About 500 workers currently make food service products such as flour and corn tortillas and chips for national accounts in the Washington County facility.
“No retail products are produced at the plant,” Sparkman said.
The unemployment rate for the metropolitan statistical area that includes Fayetteville, Springdale, Rogers and Bentonville was 5.5 percent in November — the most recent data available from Arkansas Department of Workforce Services. In comparison, the area’s unemployment rate in November 2010 was 5.9 percent.
Tyson Foods said it is the country’s second-largest manufacturer of tortillas and chips, which are sold to “quick service” Mexican restaurant chains under brands such as Mexican Original.
Tyson bought the 300,000-square-foot plant in Fayetteville in 1983 from a company operating under the Mexican Original brand name. More than a third of the plant’s square footage has been renovated. That work has including the installation of new equipment, the news release said.
Tyson also operates tortilla plants in Portland, Ind., and Sanford, N.C.
Tyson capital expenditures made elsewhere in Arkansas include a $1 million poultrydeboning plant expansion in Berryville and Green Forest in 2011, and a $13 million improvement project at a poultry-processing facility in Hope in 2010.
Business, Pages 27 on 01/06/2012