Local investment in new and existing industry reached all-time highs in 2021, the most recent complete year the Cullman Economic Development Agency (CEDA) has recorded. 

Capital investment in new and expanding industries topped $213 million for 2021 in Cullman County, divided among 39 projects that have created a combined 459 new jobs, according to information provided by the CEDA office. 

That level of investment, approaching a quarter of a billion dollars, helped Cullman County finish 2021 as the top county in the state for total economic development projects as well as for expanded projects. The county also rated second in Alabama for the number of new projects undertaken in a single year, fifth in the number of jobs created through expansions, fifth in capital investment by expansions, sixth in overall jobs created, and ninth in overall industrial capital investment. 

Those numbers may sound impressive for a county with just fewer than 90,000 people, but they’ve already been outpaced for 2022 — thanks in no small part to a single $205 million investment, announced by Tyson Foods in April, to build a new poultry rendering facility to replace the Hanceville-area plant that burned in a fire in the summer of 2021. That project will assure the retention of 125 local jobs, as employees temporarily displaced to other facilities return to work once the Hanceville-area plant is completed.

Other recent projects have ranged into the tens of millions of dollars, including the $50 million construction (counted in CEDA’s 2021 statistics) of the new 65,000-square-foot Reliance Worldwide facility along Alabama Highway 69 on Cullman’s south end. Another national corporation has plans to invest more than $22 million for a liquid asphalt facility and construction industry hub near Hanceville — a project expected to yield 12 new jobs with salaries ranging from $62,000 to $83,000 — while the Shaddix Company is adding a new product line for reinforced concrete, creating 10 new jobs through an investment of more than $8.7 million. 

So far for 2022, industries have committed a total of $236.5 million in investments for new and expanding projects in Cullman County, according to CEDA. As the year nears its end, that figure already exceeds 2021’s record-setting figure by $23.5 million.