Procter & Gamble doubling its Bear River City presence

Procter & Gamble will nearly double its manufacturing operations in Box Elder County and add about 220 jobs over the next two decades.

The Cincinnati-based company announced in 2007 it would build a $300 million plant near Bear River City that would be the company’s first “greenfield” site in the U.S. in three decades. It began producing Bounty paper towels and Charmin toilet paper in 2011. An expansion announced in 2015 was tied to a capital investment of up to $500 million.{mprestriction ids="1,3"}

The newest expansion, a $310 million project, was announced this month after the Governor’s Office of Economic Development (GOED) board approved a nearly $4.2 million tax credit incentive for the company over 20 years. The project is expected to result in about $375.3 million in new wages over five years and new state tax revenue of nearly $14 million during that period. The new jobs are expected to pay an average of $81,000.

“These are high-paying jobs for a rural community … so we couldn’t be more excited for this project,” Tom Wadsworth, GOED associate managing director, said at the board’s January meeting. He noted that since the company’s initial project announcement in 2007 that the company “has been a huge economic driver for that community.”

P&G currently sells products in 180 countries, and its brands include Always, Bounty, Charmin, Crest, Dawn, Downy, Gillette, Head & Shoulders, Olay, Oral-B, Pampers, Pantene, Tide and Vicks. It has operations in approximately 70 countries worldwide.

“This [expansion project] could have gone to many different locations throughout North America, and the company chose to come here because of what has been created here in Utah,” Darin Belnap, finance manager at the Box Elder plant, told the GOED board.

“We’re very excited,” he said. “As you know, P&G is a $67 billion company and been around since 1837, and we’re coming because Utah has a great environment for business development, and the county has been just fantastic to work with, and the workforce is incredible in Utah, so we’re very appreciative of the environment that has been created by a lot of people in this room.

“We’re almost doubling our current manufacturing base today with this expansion. And for manufacturing jobs, they’re very high-paying and we’re very excited to bring those people on board.”

When Box Elder County was selected in 2007, it won out over five existing paper-products locations. Utah was among three finalists for the greenfield option, along with Port of Murrow, Oregon, and Walla Walla, Washington. The process of landing that initial project was very secretive, with Utah state and local officials dealing on a first-name-only basis with P&G representatives and the Economic Development Corporation of Utah working through a real estate representative — and unaware that P&G was his client — for several months.

Reaction from Box Elder County officials to the expansion project was extremely positive.

“I don’t know that people realize just what an impact Procter & Gamble has in our communities,” Jeff Hadfield, a Box Elder County commissioner, told the GOED board. “And you can tell why they don’t lose a lot of people — because they take very good care of their employees, and they want to stay there.”

“Procter & Gamble is a great company and has been great to work with,” said Mitch Zundel, director of Box Elder County economic development. “They’re probably our biggest cheerleader for economic development in Box Elder County.”

In a prepared statement, plant manager Joe Tomon said the expansion is the result of consumer and customer demand, “and we couldn’t be more pleased to meet that demand with the excellent workforce of Box Elder County.”

“This expansion will create hundreds of new high-paying manufacturing jobs in Box Elder County,” Val Hale, GOED executive director, said in a prepared statement. “This is a big win for Utah as we continue to help build our rural counties and create more jobs in these areas.”

“Procter & Gamble has been a steady growth agent in Utah,” said Theresa A. Foxley, president and CEO of the Economic Development Corporation of Utah. “The company started production here in 2011 and invested again in spring 2018, and continues today to expand its state-of-the-art facility. With wages above the county average, these are high-quality manufacturing jobs for Box Elder County.”{/mprestriction}