SC chicken plant that caught fire is ramping back up. How have workers been impacted?
Workers at a Batesburg-Leesville chicken processing plant, one of the largest employers in the area, have returned following a massive fire that broke out at the facility the night of Jan. 25.
Amick Farms, a poultry plant that employs more than 1,000 people in South Carolina, resumed limited operations Feb. 16, a company spokesperson told The State, less than a month after a fire destroyed more than 10,000 square feet of production space.
“We anticipate to begin deboning birds again in March and will be at 95% of normal capacity in May,” Amick Farms Communcation Manager Brittni Miller said via email.
Amick expects that it’ll take a year for things to be fully operational.
The company posted to Facebook on March 2 telling all Batesburg team members to report for their normal schedule beginning Sunday and Monday, March 9 and 10.
“We look forward to having everyone back,” the company posted.
The facility, which processes thousands of chickens each day, paused operations for three weeks, Miller said. Some chickens that had already been bred for processing were sent to other parts of the state, like House of Raeford in West Columbia.
No birds were killed without being processed as a result of the fire, Miller told The State.
Employees who had been with the company for less than 60 days were temporarily laid off by Amick. The company filed for unemployment with the S.C. Department of Employment and Workforce for those employees and intends to bring them back as production ramps up, Miller said.
It’s not clear how many workers were temporarily laid off. Miller declined to give the number of employees and the Department of Employment and Workforce told a reporter with The State that unemployment information for companies was required to be kept confidential under state and federal statutes.
For employees who’d been there for longer two months, the company kept them on the payroll, calculating their paychecks based on the average number of hours worked for the eight weeks leading up to the fire, Miller explained.
“Even though they have not been able to work in their normal capacity, they have been assisting us with preparing the facility to resume production,” Miller said.
This story has been updated with more information from Amick Farms.
This story was originally published March 7, 2025 at 10:47 AM.
