A Jessamine County rooted international company, is expanding, thanks in part to a $2.34 million investment from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

All tech will be adding its first ever U.S. based manufacturing plant to the company's campus in Nicholasville, focusing on crop science.

It will add six manufacturing jobs and produce 66,000 gallons of fertilizer product next month.

More and our new ag and farm segment we call Rooted.

All tech is, a business focused on animal health and nutrition.

We were founded here in Kentucky in 1980 by my father and the businesses continue to grow and continue to have Kentucky as our headquarters and and really our home since then.

It's a very international business.

We operate in about 90 countries, selling over 140 countries.

But so much happens right here in Kentucky.

We're really excited about the opportunity that Altec has here with this award that the USDA has given.

It's going to be going towards, to help construct a new 15,000 square foot facility that'll be dedicated to producing a new biological fertilizer product that they've been working on.

It's going to produce about 66,000 gallons of biological fertilizer per month.

Their world headquarters located in Jessamine County.

But now they are building their first manufacturing facility here in Jessamine County.

First manufacturing facility in the United States.

Not only will it provide permanent jobs at the manufacturing facility, but it's going to generate jobs in building the facility.

This grant and this overall project actually was born out of that opportunity to say, we need to put more resources in, think about how we can develop more technologies here in the US as opposed to what we were doing before, which is mainly out of Spain or in Brazil, and really create something that can be really tailored for the US producer thinking primarily around grow crops.

I'm really excited to see, you know, how now with a fully dedicated, production unit for crop science here in the U.S., we could do something that I think makes a step change for us in terms of our growth.

The Department of Agriculture realizes the need to invest in an American company, that that will produce jobs, will produce products that our farmers can use manufactured here, reducing their dependance on foreign made products.

I think that farmers will be able to, recognize a savings in fertilizer that they use.

Plus, this is a biological fertilizer that is, creating a sustainable agriculture model of what we are producing here are products that actually will help to remove, synthetic fertilizers, pesticides from our food chain.

And so that's also an overall positive, I think, for, for our population, for our nature as well.

And so those are additional benefits that can come from this beyond just the economic impact around biological fertilizers themselves, is to help with, more availability of high quality locally produced fertilizers, that are able to help improve yields on some of our more organic, sustainable farms that we have in the state.

We need all forms of agriculture, whether it's traditional, whether it's industrial, whether it's, homestead at home, farmer's market style, or whether it's thousands of acres of corn and beans.

And so, and all the above strategy is what we look at, and we need options available for farmers that want to do this more sustainable, organic type of operation.

And this is, this is an opportunity for that for statewide agriculture as US based company selling in so many different locations, it's really impactful.

I think the the tax impact we can have here, the, the way that we can give back in in that matter, I see it as something is a little bit of a hybrid.

And I think more than anything, a first step in something that probably would be a much larger project where I think we will create more jobs here in Kentucky, as we go forward.

So this is a a first step, I would say, in a, in a process that that will continue to grow.

And I'd love to see us very much in, you know, 20s, 30s, 40s numbers of jobs that we'll be able to create, out of this, but you got to make the first step first.

Construction is set to begin on the new facility later this year, with a completion date of late 26 or early 27.