Superior Catfish hosts ribbon cutting for $20 million facility expansion

The addition will allow two more processing lines

NOXUBEE COUNTY, Miss. (WCBI) – The catfish industry is expanding in Noxubee County.

Superior Catfish held a ribbon cutting to celebrate a $20 million expansion to its existing facility.

The addition will allow two more processing lines which will result in more production and more jobs.

Superior Catfish has been around for nearly 30 years and with the help of their stockholders they are hoping to continue to grow the catfish industry in Noxubee County for years to come.

President Fred Johnson said in 2017 they saw a need to fill the gap between growers and production possibilities.

“We realized we had a need and as we looked to upgrading we realized it would just be better to add on to our plant and as we looked at our growers and our producers we realized we were not able to produce everything they were growing for us so it just made sense to add on and basically we built a completely new production facility and we just moved into that now,” Johnson said.

The expansion will allow two more production lines in the facility.

Currently, the company produces around 400,000 pounds of catfish a week.

Now, they expect to grow that production to between 550,000 and 600,000 pounds a week.

“Their vision is that we need a sustainable processing facility here because they have third and fourth generations on the farm that are growing catfish and they want their children and grandchildren to be able to sell fish here,” Johnson said.

Higher production will also mean more jobs in Noxubee County.

The catfish facility is planning to hire 25 employees to fill the new roles.

District 2 supervisor Landis Mickens said this is a great opportunity for residents.

“The number one thing is our citizens in this county and that’s what we are more proud of in bringing industry here for people to have jobs because let’s face it most of our citizens normally have to drive a number of miles for jobs and hopefully we can bring some of these homes,” Mickens said.

Johnson hopes that the expansion will continue to grow the catfish production in the area for generations to come.

“We feel like there is a lot of growth in the catfish processing industry that probably hasn’t been recognized yet. I feel like there is some being done in the industry but I feel like this will open up opportunities for us to expand to do other things as well,” Johnson said.

Superior Catfish ships all over the United States for both food service and retail.

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