A new ag company, known as Vital Farms, will establish its operations in Seymour with plans for an egg washing and packing facility.

The company made a formal announcement during a news conference at 10:45 a.m. Wednesday at city hall, 301 N. Chestnut St. Officials with the city, Indiana Economic Development Corp. and the Jackson County Industrial Corporation in attendance.

Vital Farms’ grass-fed and pasture-raised products, including shell eggs, butter, hard-boiled eggs, and liquid whole eggs, are sold in approximately 24,000 stores nationwide.

According to a real estate transfer filed June 6, Eastside Industrial Park transferred Lot2A of the Industrial Park to the Seymour Industrial Corp. The address of the properties are in the 6000 block of North County Road 1000E and the 5000 block of North Sandy Creek Drive, Seymour.

On June 12, the properties was sold by Seymour Industrial Corp. to Vital Farms LLC for $2,594,200.

According to the website vitalfarms.com, the company’s mission is to bring ethically produced food to the table by coordinating a collection of family farms with a set of organic agricultural practices that includes the humane treatment of farm animals.

The family farms utilize pasture rotation that allows “the girls” (how Vital Farms refers to their hens) to forage on a new section of grass every 21 days. That allows the section behind them to recover until they return again.

This company has a projected investment in Seymour of almost $84 million between this year and 2027, attorney Jeff Lorenzo said told city councilmen during their June 7 meeting.

The company plans to start with 97 employees and work up to 120 by 2027 with an average starting wage of $27.50 an hour.

At the news conference Wednesday morning, Mayor Matt Nicholson said it didn’t take him long to figure out that Vital Farms values their employees, making mention of Cluck University and Leadership Eggcelerator — a learning management system and a six-month training program, respectively. Nicholson also commended Vital Farms’ regenerative agriculture practices and attention to local communities.

“Partnering with the Ozarks Technical College made me think of JCLC and programs and potentials there in the future,” Nicholson said.

In 2022, Vital Farms dedicated $50,000 — over five years — to the Ozarks Technical Community College’s Center for Advanced Manufacturing (CAM) located in Springfield, Missouri. Vital Farms’ award-winning egg washing and packing facility, Egg Central Station, opened in 2017 in Springfield.

Vital Farms is seeking to work with area farmers and wants to get involved with local non-profits and parks programs, Nicholson said.

“I do believe that they are a community-minded business, and I’m excited to have them join us as one of our local industries,” Nicholson said. “The more I learned about Vital Farms, the more egg-cited I was.”

Next, Trevor Lane — the Indiana Economic Development Corporation’s director of attractions for the Southern Region — welcomed Vital Farms to the state of Indiana.

“We’re proud to call you Hoosiers now,” Lane said.

Lane congratulated the city of Seymour for attracting Vital Farms, as the company’s search for a new egg-washing and packing facility’s location was “a very, very competitive situation.”

“Indiana’s been on a roll lately,” Lane said. “We’ve got over $56 billion of new capex (capital expenditures) committed to the state of Indiana since January of 2023, and we have the possibility of doubling that this year.”

Lane thanked Vital Farms for their commitment to Indiana and introduced Russell Diez-Canseco, president and CEO of Vital Farms.

“This is a company that was founded with the idea that we should be purpose-led and that we should focus on long-term benefits for stakeholders, and not just shareholders,” Diez-Canseco said. “When we go talk to a new prospective customer, when we hire someone, when we enter a new community, it isn’t about ‘What can we get from this person?’ or ‘What can we get from this place?’ It’s about ‘How can we kind of grow the pie together to help create better outcomes for all of us?’”

Vital Farms will exceed $1 billion in revenue in 2027, Diez-Canseco said.

“So, we actually need a building in Seymour to open in 2026, or else we’re capped,” Diez-Canseco said.

Egg Central Station Seymour is the tentative name of the egg washing and packing facility coming to Seymour. The facility will be less than a day’s drive from area farmers.

“We bought enough land so that we could expand it over time as we did in Springfield, but on day one, we’ll have the capacity to support over 165 farms,” Diez-Canseco said. “And we’ll support over 150 new, really high-quality jobs. And we really do care about our people and invest in their training and development and their health and well-being, because that’s actually good for business and good for what we’re here to do.”

Tribune reporter Jared Reedy also contributed to this story.