Mebane offers incentives to attract Lotus Bakeries after county snub

Mebane is offering incentives to keep Lotus Bakeries growing at its Mebane plant after Alamance County commissioners rejected an earlier request for county support. The move puts the Belgian cookie maker, best known for Biscoff, back at the center of a local economic-development fight over jobs, taxes and which government is willing to pay to land the project.

Lotus Bakeries has already become a major industrial player in Mebane. In November 2016, the company chose the N.C. Industrial Center for its first U.S. facility and said it would invest more than $48 million to build a 160,000-square-foot plant expected to employ 60 people. That initial project later drew about $1.8 million in city and county incentives for a $72.7 million plant.

The company has kept expanding. In July 2021, Lotus said it would invest approximately $62 million to add 111,000 square feet to its Mebane production facility and install three new production lines, a plan expected to create up to 90 jobs. Less than a year later, North Carolina officials said Lotus would invest more than $84 million more in Mebane and add 62 jobs in a second expansion.

Those jobs were not low-wage positions. State officials said the new positions would include operators, technicians and material handlers, with a collective average annual salary of $47,873. That figure topped Alamance County’s overall average annual wage of $46,999, one reason local leaders often view Lotus as a strong return on public investment even when the upfront incentive package is hard to justify politically.

The latest dispute shows the divide between county caution and Mebane’s willingness to spend. Alamance County commissioners rejected a Lotus incentives request tied to the 2021 expansion, leaving Mebane to decide whether the plant’s future production lines, payroll and property value are worth another round of public support. For the city, the calculation is straightforward: a larger Lotus presence could strengthen its tax base and industrial corridor, while a missed deal could send more investment and jobs elsewhere.

Lotus’s repeated expansions have made it more than a one-time recruitment win. The company’s Mebane site has become a recurring test of whether local governments will compete aggressively for a foreign-owned manufacturer already on the ground, or draw back and risk losing the next round of investment.