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Tag: Farmville

Meat processor to build $1.7M Prince Edward facility

A halal meat business, 5 Pillar Meats, will invest more than $1.7 million to build an abattoir and red meat processing facility in Prince Edward County, a project expected to create 12 jobs, Gov. Glenn Youngkin announced Thursday.

The new building, which will be located on a 3-acre site in the Prince Edward County Business Park in Farmville, will be nearly 3,000 square feet. It will provide processing services for Southside Virginia livestock producers, focusing on beef, lamb and goats.

The Prince Edward-based 5 Pillar Meats is an extension of Green Bay-based Abdus-Sabur Farms, which has produced livestock and vegetables since 1982, according to 5 Pillar Meats Chief Operations Officer Sekou Abdus-Sabur. This project will be the company’s first meat processing facility.

5 Pillar Meats will have two sources of meats: animals harvested in the facility and meat purchased from a local wholesale distributor, Abdus-Sabur said in a statement. Animals harvested will be halal, meaning prepared in a way that is sanctioned by Islamic law, unless a customer specifically asks that the meat not be halal.

The company, which will source its livestock from Virginia farms, will offer wholesale and retail cuts processing to restaurants, hotels, grocers and retail consumers, especially those seeking halal meats. The company will also sell fresh cut meats at its small on-site retail store.

“We are happy to have the opportunity to offer this service to small and large producers alike who have had limited access to USDA-inspected processing of their livestock. Now, both will be able to market to the public,” 5 Pillar Meats CEO Qadir Abdus-Sabur said in a statement. “Families, local restaurants, hotels and others can enjoy locally raised, harvested and processed meat/meat products. We look forward to serving our community.”

The Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services worked with the Virginia Tobacco Region Revitalization Commission, Prince Edward County and the county’s Industrial Development Authority to secure the project. Youngkin approved a $50,000 grant from the Governor’s Agriculture and Forestry Industries Development Fund, which the county will match locally. The Virginia Tobacco Region Revitalization Commission is granting the project $75,000.

“I thank 5 Pillar Meats for their investment in Farmville and in Southside Virginia livestock producers,” Youngkin said in a statement. “This is the type of project that the AFID grant program was designed for as it creates rural jobs, encourages economic development and promotes agriculture, Virginia’s largest private industry.”

Farmville SEED hub seeks to grow innovation

Luther Cifers launched fishing equipment company YakAttack LLC in 2009 out of his friend’s basement, and he moved to the garage to create prototypes of its gear. Now, he is putting in work so future entrepreneurs will have a dedicated space for their projects.

The Farmville SEED Innovation Hub, slated to open in late fall, is a 10,000-square-foot business accelerator and training space that would replace a vacant Barnes & Noble book store in Midtown Square. Construction is pending approval from the U.S. Economic Development Administration to move forward with bidding.

“My vision for this thing is something that would have been useful for us in the early days,” says Cifers, whose background is in engineering and design.

A partnership between Longwood University and Hampden-Sydney College, SEED sprouted from a collaboration between Longwood’s Office of Economic and Community Development, GO Virginia and Mid-Atlantic Broadband Inc. on an entrepreneurship and innovation investment strategy in 2019. It is funded with $1.9 million from the federal American Rescue Plan Act, $674,304 from GO Virginia, $500,000 from the Virginia Tobacco Region Revitalization Commission and $375,000 from the Longwood Real Estate Foundation. The hub is expected to create 60 jobs, retain 159 jobs and generate about $5 million in private investment.

One of the gaps the groups identified in the region was the availability of entrepreneurial spaces that have makerspace capabilities, innovation labs and “tools and resources for everyone K through 12, on up to collegiate and community,” says Sheri McGuire, executive director of Longwood’s Small Business Development Center.

Among the hub’s offerings will be 3-D printers, entrepreneurial bootcamps, pitch competitions and idea summits. Other details, including how Cifers plans to help, are still in the works.

Farmville’s hub also will complement South Boston’s SOVA Innovation Hub, which opened in 2020 and offers a co-working space and has a makerspace in preliminary planning stages. Both facilities represent a change in the regions’ economic focus.

“If Southern Virginia is going to transform its economy and create wealth [and] create household income, it has to look to other ways of creating opportunity,” says Bryan David, program director of GO Virginia Region 3, which spans 13 counties and includes Danville and Martinsville. “Entrepreneurship is, frankly, one of those ways that a lot of rural regions have found success.”