Two eastern Iowa cities will share some five-and-a-half million dollars in state tax benefits in exchange for creating new jobs at their A-D-M corn processing plants. Amy Johnson of the Iowa Department of Economic Development says the plants in Clinton and Cedar Rapids will benefit from what’s call the New Jobs and Income Program. She says there’ll be 20 new jobs divided between the two, with 15 of the jobs being non-managment positions. Johnson says A-D-M plans to spend 107 million dollars on its two plants. They’re doing a significant upgrade of machinery and equipment to improve plant efficiency, upgrading their safety systems and upgrading their pollution control. Johnson says the project was given a waiver of the normal limit that requires companies to create at least 50 jobs because of the recent tough economic situations in the communities. She says Cedar Rapids has lost over 18-hundred jobs the past few years through layoffs at McCleod and Rockwell Collins and Clinton has seen 700 jobs lost through the closing of the International Paper. The new jobs at the plants will pay an average wage of nearly 29-dollars-an-hour. The A-D-M plant in Clinton employs 571 people and Cedar Rapids operations employ 282. The company also has Iowa grain processing plants in Des Moines and Keokuk.
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