Company and community officials in Paducah Wednesday unveiled a new 166,261-square-foot distribution facility for the H.T. Hackney Co. The Knoxville, Tenn.-based wholesale grocery distributor plans to add 40 new jobs as part of the expansion. The company already employs more than 100 in Paducah.
H.T. Hackney is one of the largest wholesale distributors in the United States, with 30 supply centers serving more than 20,000 retail customers in 22 states. Former University of Tennessee basketball coach Bruce Pearl is the company's vice president of marketing.
“We are happy to expand our distribution center in a community that has readily available industrial parks that allow us to reduce our down time,” Dean Ballinger, H.T. Hackney’s vice president and chief operating officer, said in a press release from Gov. Steve Beshear's office. “Paducah is a leading location choice for the distributors. The incentive certainly helped us make a favorable decision for Paducah.”
To encourage the expansion in McCracken County, the Kentucky Economic Development Finance Authority preliminarily approved H.T. Hackney for tax benefits up to $588,000 through the Kentucky Enterprise Initiative Act.
“We are excited that H.T. Hackney, which has been an employer in Paducah for the past 22 years, is continuing to invest not only in our community, but in our workforce,” state Sen. Robert Leeper of Paducah said.
