Why a Leamington greenhouse is investing $200M in Ohio

Nature Fresh Farms, a greenhouse operation in Leamington, Ont., will spend $200 million to expand in the small town of Delta, Ohio, instead of doing so at home.

Nature Fresh Farms plans to break ground this year on the first six of 71 hectares it expects to operate in the small town of 3,100 people, located 50 km west of Toledo.

Here are some of the reasons the company chose Ohio over Ontario:

Tax Incentives

Delta and Fulton County have agreed to give Nature Fresh Farms a 100-per-cent tax abatement for 15 years. The company will not have to pay municipal land taxes during that time. Instead, Nature Fresh Farms will make a charitable donation to Fulton County for the equivalent of half of what the tax would normally be. In doing so, the company will get a charitable receipt.

The donation will be used to pay for local public education.

We look at this as a business investment with a partnership we think will pay dividends over a long period of time, said Brad Peebles, the village administrator for Delta.

Training Grants

The State of Ohio has agreed to provide grants to be used to train new employees, Peebles said.

The company plans to employ more than 300 people once the project is complete and fully operational. Its payroll at the Fulton County location will be nearly $12 million US annually.

Proximity to Freeways

The new facility will be located on the Interstate 80/90 corridor.

The highway is one of the longest interstates in the U.S. and links Boston in the east to Seattle in the west. It begins near Logan International Airport in Boston and ends in downtown Seattle, carving a path through the American Midwest along the way.

The new greenhouses will also be 30 km west of Interstate 75, one of Americas most critical north-south routes.

Location, workforce and general proximity to current operations all came together to make it an attractive site, Peebles said.

Cheap Infrastructure

Nature Fresh Farms will also have access to low-interest and no-interest loans to construct off-site and on-site infrastructure the company may need to construct the greenhouses, Peebles said.

In the state of Ohio and many states around us, it is a bidding war, Peebles said.

Our governments arent providing the infrastructure for them to stay here, Leamington Mayor John Paterson said. The enticements weve heard about, we cant legally do at the municipal level and the provincial government seems reluctant to do.

Cheap power

Rather than deal with and pay rising electricity costs in Ontario, the greenhouse will be partnering with a steel manufacturer in an effort to lessen cost of power.

Nature Fresh Farms is exploring a partnership with North Star Bluescope Steel which would see the greenhouse use carbon dioxide waste heat from the steel operations to help power the year-round, grow-light operation.

North Star Bluescope Steel is located across the street from the Nature Fresh Farms site, which breaks ground in the spring.

According to a media release, Nature Fresh Farms has a say in the utility rates it will pay, too.

The expansion is "contingent upon acceptable levels of incentives from the State of Ohio and other government authorities as well as utility rates agreeable to Nature Fresh."

Given all the incentives, Paterson cant fault the company for deciding to expand in Ohio.

Its a pretty sweet deal, the mayor said. Pretty much every other large greenhouse organization has their expansions in Mexico or the U.S. for those reasons.

It is definitely a loss and a significant loss to Leamington, Ontario and Canada.

Several calls to Nature Fresh Farms weren't returned.