KINGFIELD – Poland Spring representatives discussed the company’s plans for a 5-acre, $100 million bottling plant just south of town with nearly 125 Kingfield people Saturday morning.
They spoke about the different kinds of jobs being offered and the different kids of benefits, said First Selectman John Dill.
The benefits package includes medical, dental and eye care, according to Tom Brennan, natural resources manager for Poland Spring. “I can tell you, from my own point of view, it’s quite good,” he said.
If permit applications run smoothly and everything goes as planned, the Poland-based water bottling company might start hiring as early as June, 2007, Brennan said. Initially, the company will run two high-speed bottling lines and hire about 30 workers. As production increases, that number is expected to grow to about 135 full-time employees. Some seasonal workers may be hired as well, Brennan said.
“People had questions. The people you expect to be against the project had questions, and people I thought were pro-Poland Spring had questions,” about jobs and about the other major issue in Kingfield – trucking, Dill said.
Poland Spring officials said they hoped the plant’s proposed location south of town would mitigate much of the truck traffic. But some of the tanker trucks coming to the Kingfield plant from a Dallas Plantation pumping station expected to be given a permit Monday by the Land Use Regulation Commission will have to go through town to get to the plant, Brennan admitted.
“If you’re going to have a manufacturing facility, you’re going to have trucks,” Brennan said.
Both Brennan and Dill said afterwards they felt the meeting had gone well, and both said they felt the question-and-answer session toward the end of the meeting was the most valuable part.
“There’s concerns about some of these issues, and they’re all valid,” Brennan said. “We can work the community in terms of minimizing those impacts.”
If the state permitting process “moves along well,” and Kingfield residents and officials agree to grant the plant a permit as well, building will probably begin next spring. “We’re hoping by roughly January 2008 to be in full production,” Brennan said.
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