70 Cobb employees move to downtown Siloam Springs office

City officials, poultry industry representatives and employees of Siloam Springs-based broiler breeder Cobb-Vantress Inc. recently celebrated the opening of its 35,000-square-foot corporate office building in downtown Siloam Springs. Nearly 200 people attended the event, according to a news release.

In May, Cobb purchased the two-story building at 305 E. Main St. for $1.5 million and started renovations, which will continue over the next few months. About 70 Cobb employees work in the building and are from a mix departments, including human resources, environmental health and safety, marketing, research and development, information technology and the World Tech Team.

“This new facility gives us an opportunity to spread out from our existing corporate global office, which was largely overcrowded,” Cobb President Joel Sappenfield said. “We had been considering building or purchasing a new facility when the office building was listed for sale. We’ve got a great downtown location that gives us room to continue to grow and ensures that we can meet the needs of our customers — both now and in years to come.”

The building was built in the 1970s and an addition was completed in the 1990s. Before Cobb purchased it from Sager Creek Foods, it was an office for Sager Creek Vegetable Co., a company of Del Monte Foods of California, and prior to that, it was the corporate office building for vegetable producer Allens Inc., formerly Allen Canning Co. Cobb’s other Siloam Springs location at 4703 U.S. Highway 412 East will continue to be the company’s global corporate headquarters.

Cobb was established in 1916 and relocated its corporate headquarters to Siloam Springs, from Concord, Mass., in 1986. In 1994, Tyson Foods purchased the oldest pedigree broiler breeding company in the world. The company distributes poultry to more than 120 counties and has facilities in each region of the world. Some of its products include the Cobb500, CobbMVMale, Cobb700 and CobbSasso.