After all the tax breaks and giveaways the State of Vermont supplied them with over the years should we be at all troubled (or even surprised) by this?
The maker of the Keurig single-cup coffee system said Thursday it plans to build its new cold-brewed beverage maker line at a plant in Douglas County [Georgia], creating about 550 jobs.
Vermont-based Keurig Green Mountain will make its single-serving cold drink system at a plant in Lithia Springs, about 20 miles west of downtown Atlanta. The state and Keurig said the company will spend $337 million over five years on the project. […]
Keurig was offered and is eligible for tax credits for creating jobs as well as a sales and use tax exemption for machinery. The jobs tax credits alone could be worth up to $4.8 million over five years, according to an analysis by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
[emphasis added]
Data availability varies but according to Goodjobsfirst.org subsidy tracker Green Mountain Coffee Roasters (AKA Coca-Cola cold pod packing inc.) got $9,254,071 worth of assorted grants, low cost loans, tax credits and job training gifts here in Vermont, the majority since 2011.That’s a nice little bit of our limited state money put to work helping Keurig-GMCR’s bottom line and shareholders.
I guess Vermont didn’t know that Keurig-GMCR might have had Georgia on their mind in 2012 when hitting us up for an additional $250,000 tax break on a cutting edge packing machine. Business savvy Secretary of Commerce Lawrence Miller championed the idea because:
“This is the type of production equipment we’re going to see more of in different industries,” Secretary of Commerce Lawrence Miller said “And it’s those companies on the cutting edge that we want to attract.”
How’d that attraction work out, Secretary Miller?
coke lives in Atlanta….. will coffee soon follow?
Up here, all these annoying environmentalists have been asking them for a decade why they won’t develop a recyclable K-cup, and why the fill-it-yourself reusable simply doesn’t work!
The simple but embarrassing answer has always been: because environmental dysfunction suits their bottom line.
…don’t leave.
Let’s see, $9 million is 180 job-years at $50,000 annual salary. Divide by 4 years since 2011 and that’s 45 jobs at the national median wage. Did they create that many jobs at that pay scale because of those gimmies? How many FTE jobs did that $250k create, and will those positions withstand bribery from some other state?