Polyvulc USA at the Port of Vicksburg will remain open as the result of a multistep sale of property involving Warren County.
On Thursday, Warren County supervisors agreed to sell a warehouse on 9.5 acres of land behind the former plastics and rubber recycler to the business’ owners, FLC Real Estate LLC, for $1 to speed up a sale to Ergon BioFuels, a subsidiary of the petroleum-processing staple at the port. The warehouse is a base for freight shipper Power Transport Services.
Though not specified in closing documents OK’d by the board, the move capped off an agreement reached late last year for the Ergon entity to acquire Polyvulc’s two main warehouses at 1645 Haining Road, the county-owned PTS warehouse at 1777 Haining, and a PTS-owned building at 1543 Haining, said Bill Shappley, attorney for Polyvulc’s ownership group.
“As part of the acquisition agreement, Ergon simultaneously leased the 1645 Haining premises to PolyVulcUSA, which will continue its operations at that location,” Shappley said via email Friday. “Ergon also leased the 1543 and 1777 Haining Road parcels to Power Transport Services, which will continue its operations from those two parcels.”
Terms of those leases would not be recorded in the chancery clerk’s office, Shappley said.
Once home to several steel processing industries, the property at 1777 Haining Road was leased by the county in 1983 to Vicksburg Steel Service Inc. as part of a $2.1 million industrial bond issue to pay for improvements, according to a legal description in the resolution. Terms allowed the property to be bought back from the county for $1 whenever the bonds were paid off. The final payment was in 1993. Polyvulc became the effective tenant of the site in 2005, documents showed.
Thursday’s meeting had been continued from Monday, when the board recessed specifically to vote on the sale. Shappley presented the item, which was noted on the meeting agenda with the names of both FLC and Ergon BioFuels. The resolution and sale specifics mentioned only the building at 1777 Haining and not the rest of Polyvulc’s 7.3-acre facility.
In November, Ergon announced it would restart operations at the ethanol plant by May and hire 30 people. It had shut down in 2012. Ergon has not announced any plans of its own for the buildings.
In July, the business founded by Fred Farrell and Larry Lambiotte in 1995, hired a search firm to seek buyers for its two main warehouses at 1645 Haining Road and two subsidiaries located in Jackson and Winnsboro, La. The company had set a 45-day deadline, which passed without a sale.
Polyvulc opened at the port in 1998 and followed the founders’ first business venture, Falco Lime, on the port’s industrial landscape. The company took recycled rubber from tires or the auto industry and repackaged it as pier pads and foundation wall systems for manufactured homes. At its two subsidiaries, old tires were ground up for multiple uses, including playground surfaces and roofing.
Power Transport had been the maintenance entity for Falco’s trucks.