Delta Peanut LLC of Jonesboro, coming off a $70 million investment last year, is growing again.
It recently raised $4.5 million by selling 16,000 units of ownership in the farmer-owned cooperative, according to Delta Peanut CEO Tommy Jumper.
The target was to sell 10,000 units. “There was an appetite to purchase more units than we had originally built into our model,” Jumper said. “So interest was high and people are encouraged.”
The money will be used to build a plant to clean and dry peanuts before they are delivered to Jonesboro to be shelled.
Jumper said he didn’t have a timeline on when the announcement will come for where the new facility will be built.
Delta Peanut is finishing construction on its $60 million Jonesboro shelling facility — the first in the state — on more than 70 acres in Jonesboro’s industrial park.
The shelling portion and cold storage portion of the plant was supposed to have been completed in March, but weather delayed construction, Jumper said.
He expects the plant to be shelling peanuts in late July.
The Jonesboro plant’s receiving area is open, as is the $10 million facility in Marianna, where peanuts are cleaned and dried.
Meanwhile, the pandemic has “actually driven the price of peanuts up,” Jumper said.
People are buying “more shelf-stable protein kind of products, so peanuts fit very, very well into that,” Jumper said.
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