Perdue scraps plans to move headquarters to Delmar, says it’s not because of DNREC fine

Perdue officials say the reason they dropped highly anticipated plans to move their AgriBusiness headquarters from Salisbury to Delmar was not because of a fine issued by DNREC, but instead a decision made to ensure the best interests of the company.

Without elaborating on specifics of the change in plans, an official with Perdue said, “We our constantly reviewing our business and real estate holdings across our company and determined that moving forward was not in our best interest to ensure we operate our business as effectively and efficiently as possible.”

After years of talks with community leaders, the company made the announcement in 2010 that they were planning on relocating their AgriBusiness headquarters to Delaware.

Perdue said they’re grateful for the support and patience since first announcing plans to relocate.

“We recognize this is disappointing news for the Town of Delmar, Sussex County and the State of Delaware, and we are grateful for their support and patience since first announcing our plans to relocate to Delaware in 2010,” a company official stated.

The relocation would have brought roughly 200 jobs to the Delmar-area, which Delaware State Representative Tim Dukes said the community and Town officials were really looking forward to.

“Extremely dissapointed,” Rep. Dukes said on the Mike Bradley Show Friday morning. “We were really looking forward to those 200 jobs.”

Rep. Dukes said there were a number of reasons why the company decided not to relocate its headquarters.

One of the reasons, which the company claims is not the case, could be that they were issued a nearly $85,000 fine and state penalities in 2018 by the Delaware Department of Natural Resources & Environmental Control (DNREC).

The company was fined by DNREC in 2018 over discharge from their wastewater treatment plant that made its way into Savannah Ditch, a tributary of the Broadkill River.

“From what I understand there’s a few different things that made their decision,” Rep. Dukes said. “One was cutbacks and layoffs that made the news a few months ago, just a little concerned about the transition of moving and also, from what I understand, there was an issue with a fine they received from their manuer processing plant, which is outside of Blades, they received a pretty large, substantial fine from the Department of Natural Resources.”

Moving forward, the Town of Delmar is in talks with a number of companies who have reportedly expressed interest in locating their business to the site off Route 13.