Initial dirt work and construction of a poultry project in northeast Arkansas is underway. Spokesman Steve Conley of Alabama-based Peco Foods tells KASU news a fully integrated poultry complex is expected to open in 2016, which will bring about 1,000 new jobs to Clay and Randolph Counties. The 165 million dollar project includes a 255-thousand square-foot processing plant and a 73-thousand square-foot hatchery in Pocahontas and a feed mill and state-of-the-art water treatment and protein conversion facilities in Corning. Conley says Peco will work with more than 90 poultry farmers and dozens of grain farmers in northeast Arkansas. Conley estimates weekly grain usage will be in the range of 339-thousand bushels of corn and 24-hundred tons of soy meal for the complex. Peco Foods has a plant in Batesville and operates a feed mill in Newark. Peco is the eighth largest poultry processing company in the United States and processes about 24 million pounds of poultry each week.