Tax exemptions for improvements and one involving inventory should go forward for 2009, Warren County supervisors said Thursday.

Foremost is more than $3.6 million of inventory marked for shipment out of state from the Bunge-Ergon ethanol plant at the Port of Vicksburg. Supervisors said they will grant the tax break based on previously agreed-on construction benchmarks.

Production at the 54 million-gallon-capacity plant, the state’s lone such facility, began last year. On Monday, the owners applied to the City of Vicksburg to exempt shipments outside Mississippi the company says equals 58 percent of its $6,351,210 inventory. The company would save $67,748.89 in city, county and school taxes if approved by both governing boards.

The plant employs about 35 and produces ethanol used for fuel blends. Safest for use in most traditional vehicle engines is a 10 percent mix, which is offered depending on gas prices.  

In September 2006, supervisors voted 4-1 in support for free port warehousing within an inventory tax and an exemption on finished goods as long as the investment surpassed $100 million — passed in tandem with a fee-in-lieu of ad valorem and property taxes at Ergon’s existing local refinery. Cost calculations have reportedly reached $126 million, Board President Richard George said Thursday, prompting the application. In the early 1990s, a previous inventory-related exemption was afforded to McCarty Foods for its chicken processing plant at Ceres, now operated by Tyson Foods.

“(Ergon) was instrumental in getting money to get the port road,” George said.

A reluctant supporter of inventory-related tax breaks for the ethanol plant — and a staunch critic of most industrial tax breaks not tied to expansion — George added future projects wanting the same “would have to be of some magnitude.”

The lone vote against the plant’s inventory tax was former District 4 supervisor Carl Flanders, who wanted free port warehousing language taken out of the deal. Bill Lauderdale, who preceded and succeeded him on the board, said he supports the ethanol plant’s current request but used a fee-in-lieu supervisors granted to the Southeast Supply Header natural gas pipeline during Flanders’ term as an example of one he wouldn’t support.

Passed unanimously by supervisors in 2006, a resolution-of-intent on that tax break has not been officially granted because the project did not meet local employment minimums, supervisors have said.

As for improvement-related property tax exemptions, three companies have applied to the city and/or county this year — Anderson-Tully, Cooper Lighting and LeTourneau Technologies Inc.

Anderson-Tully closed a mill on Levee Street at the end of 2008, which coincided with the completion of an extensive improvement project at its facilities on North Washington Street. Its exemption request covers $8,076,799.54 in real and personal property related to the upgrade.

More than 2,000 layoffs from its global workforce of 31,000 were announced by Cooper Lighting earlier this year, some of which included jobs cut at its U.S. 61 South plant. Its request includes $910,530.53 in machinery and equipment additions, including a building cover.

LeTourneau has applied to exempt $5,751,600 in additional equipment, chiefly a $3 million press and furnace.

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Contact Danny Barrett Jr. at dbarrett@vicksburgpost.com