Glad to have buyer of PYCO oil mill

Greenwood and Leflore County received some welcome economic news last week with the announcement that PYCO oil mill had a buyer.

Delta Oil Mill of Jonestown, the last remaining cottonseed-oil processing facility in Mississippi, has announced its plans to acquire the Greenwood plant as well as PYCO’s storage facilities in Minter City and West Helena, Ark.

The PYCO mill had stopped production in March as the Texas-based company scaled back its operations in response to the severe reduction in cotton acreage in Mississippi and throughout the South.

The acquisition works for Delta Oil Mill, a gin-owned cooperative just like PYCO, because it plans to use this opportunity to diversify its business.

At least in the short term, the Greenwood oil mill will be converted to processing soybeans, while all the cottonseed production will be concentrated at the Jonestown plant.

Should cotton acreage rebound sufficiently in the future, however, the Greenwood plant will have the capability to quickly revert back to cottonseed.

This strategy gives Delta Oil Mill more flexibility to respond to the planting decisions made by farmers, which in recent years have been heavy on grains and light on cotton.

Since it doesn’t take as much labor to process soybeans as cotton, the anticipated employment at the Greenwood mill, when it resumes production in the first quarter of 2010, will be less than one-third of what PYCO employed at its peak. Still, 30 jobs are 30 jobs. Given the spate of closures and reductions during this recession, it’s nice to have news of jobs being added back.

Those 30 jobs are not the only benefit that Delta Oil Mill brings to this community. It gives grain elevators and farmers a nearby buyer for their commodity, and it brings back on line for Greenwood Utilities one of its larger industrial consumers.

We welcome Delta Oil Mill to Greenwood and hope this is the beginning of a long and prosperous relationship.


Source