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Keurig Dr Pepper will delay closing its Windsor roasting plant.

The beverage manufacturer, which produces the Dr Pepper and Snapple brands and the single-serve K-cups used in Keurig coffeemakers, announced in July that the 330,000-square-foot facility that’s operated in the county’s Shirley T. Holland Intermodal Park on the outskirts of Windsor since 2012 would close by the end of the year.

Isle of Wight Economic Development Director Kristi Sutphin, whose department has been working with Keurig to market the building to a new user and assist the plant’s 379 workers with finding new employment, said at a Nov. 7 county supervisors meeting that she’d learned the company would extend operations into the first quarter of 2025.

Sutphin said the extension was the result of products manufactured at the Windsor plant and shipped to Tennessee being damaged when Hurricane Helene hit the midwestern state in late September.

Katie Gilroy, senior director of corporate communications for Keurig, told The Smithfield Times on Nov. 19 that “due to evolving supply chain needs of the business, we will be maintaining production at our Windsor facility through early 2025,” but declined to specify whether Helene had prompted the decision.

Gilroy, in July, told the Times that the then-planned Dec. 31 closing aligned with a production ramp-up at Keurig’s Spartanburg, South Carolina, manufacturing facility. The Windsor closure “enables us to rebalance our production capacity geographically and advance our effort to operate efficiently,” she said at the time.

Keurig confirmed in August that it plans to sell the plant once operations cease, and had as of that month received multiple inquiries.

“We’re working out of two angles on this project; we’re working with our state and regional workforce partners on rapid response, which is basically rapid reemployment to try to help those impacted workers. … There are about 25 companies that have either called us directly or have called the company or the Workforce Council and have expressed interest in hiring those workers, so those companies will be the focus of the job fair that will be put together,” Sutphin said. “We are also looking ahead to the sale of the property and trying to backfill the building.”

Sutphin said Keurig is working with CBRE Group, a Norfolk-based international real estate company, to sell the building.

“Those brokers are doing a site assessment now to try to determine the value,” Sutphin said.

That assessment, she said, will depend on what equipment remains with the building once operations cease.

The county valued the plant and its surrounding land at $22.7 million in 2023 when reassessing property values for tax purposes.

Isle of Wight Commissioner of the Revenue Gerald Gwaltney, in July, said Keurig paid just under $140,000 in real estate taxes in 2023 based on an assessed $19.6 million in land and property values, making it the sixth highest in the county. Keurig also paid just under $745,000 in 2023 machinery and tools taxes based on an assessed $38.1 million valuation of its assets, making it the third highest behind International Paper’s Franklin mill and Smithfield Foods.

The Keurig plant is located within an enterprise zone, which could qualify a future tenant for state and local grants depending on the amount it invests in repurposing the building or job creation.