Dixie Specialty Fiber closing plant in Trion, Georgia

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Three years after building a $19 million plant in the Trion (Georgia) Industrial Park, Dixie Specialty Fiber has shut down the microfiber plant and put the 125,000-square-foot complex up for sale.

The closing ends jobs for about 80 workers in Chattooga County who once were employed by Dixie Specialty Fiber, a division of the color resins pellets manufacturing company Dixie Color Inc.

When then-Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal announced plans for Dixie Specialty Fiber in Trion in 2018, Deal said the new company should eventually bring up to 100 jobs to the rural county in Northwest Georgia.

The Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act requires 60 days' notice to workers for layoffs of 100 or more workers, but the shutdown did not meet that threshold, and no notice is listed so far on the Georgia Department of Labor's list of business closures.

Dixie Specialty Fiber, which specialized in single pigment dispersions, custom color masterbatches and plastic compounding used for mats, rugs and carpets, was unable to fulfill the terms of the tax incentive package offered by the town to lure the company nearly four years ago to pick Trion for its production plant.

Trion Mayor Lanny Thomas said Wednesday the company will now be required to repay the exempted property taxes over the past three years on its 12-acre parcel.

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"We're working with the owners of Dixie Specialty Fiber, and we'll do all we can to help them find a buyer or someone to fill that building," Thomas said in a telephone interview. "We had a (10-year property tax) abatement agreement with the company, and they will be paying their back taxes for breaking (the terms of) the abatement."

Thomas said town and county tax authorities are still calculating what Dixie Specialty Fiber will have to pay in back taxes.

In 2020, the municipality offered additional land in the Trion Industrial Park next to the Dixie Specialty Fiber plant for Dixie Color to expand from its previous site in south Walker County. But that relocation never occurred.

Dixie Specialty Fibers was the first U.S. supplier of microfiber for the carpet industry. The company announced plans three years ago to participate in the Georgia Quick Start training program through Georgia Northwestern Technical College to help workers employ specialized equipment made in Remscheid, Germany.

But one of the founders of Dixie Specialty Fiber, William Robert Dendy, died during a golf trip in 2019, shortly after the plant was built.

Dixie Color and Dixie Dye, which are sister companies to Dixie Specialty Fiber, continue to operate in LaFayette, Georgia. Dixie Color, which began in 2009, is a masterbatch and color concentrate manufacturer that makes polymer products with custom color matching.

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David Tidmore, a former president of the Chattooga County Chamber of Commerce who serves as treasurer for the Northwest Georgia Joint Development Authority, said he hopes the industrial site being given up by Dixie Specialty Fibers can be used to recruit other businesses to Trion and make up for the job losses.

"I am concerned about these job losses even during a period of relatively low unemployment," Tidmore said in a phone interview. "But, hopefully, the industrial park can be used to recruit other employers."

Contact Dave Flessner at dflessner@timesfreepress.com or at 423-757-6340 or on Twitter at @dflessner1.

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