Sampson County Lands $200M Power Plant That Will Burn Poultry Litter

CLINTON, N.C. — A Pennsylvania company will build a $200 million power generation plant near Faison, creating approximately 100 jobs.

The facility will burn poultry litter in order to produce steam that in turn will drive turbines for electricity generation.

Fibrowatt and Sampson County officials made the announcement Wednesday.

To land the plant, Sampson County will provide Fibrowatt with some $2.5 million in property tax breaks, according to Terry Walmsley, the company’s vice president of environmental and public affairs.

Poultry farmers in the region will be paid anywhere from $2 to $12 a ton for their poultry litter.

The plant will generate 55 megawatts of electricity – enough to power 40,000 homes for a year, according to a Fibrowatt spokesperson.

Fibrowatt, which already operates a similar facility in Minnesota, also plans to build two other plants in North Carolina.

Sampson County and Duplin County had been bidding for the Fibrowatt business. Sampson County has acquired options on 300 acres of land near the intersection of I-40 and N.C. Highway 355 north of Clinton, according to Walmsley. Fibrowatt does not need all 300 acres and will purchase what it determines is needed for the plant, Walmsley said.

Fibrowatt also considered Duplin County for the plant. However, the project encountered local opposition from people who questioned the environmental impact it would have.

The company utilizes technology that its founders used to build three plants in the United Kingdom in the 1990s. Those plants have turned more than 7 million tons of poultry litter into 4 million megawatts of electricity, according to Fibrowatt’s Web site.

The power generation process also creates an ash product that can be turned into fertilizer. The U.K. plants have produced some 500,000 tons of ash.