A candy manufacturer on Georgia Road in Irondale wants to grow its operation with a $3.785 million expansion that could bring 60 new jobs to Jefferson County. Sandblast by Creative Concepts Inc., which makes candy and interactive candy-dispensing systems, is asking the city for nearly $385,000 in tax abatements to help make it happen.
The company projects the new positions would generate roughly $2.71 million in combined annual payroll, which works out to about $45,200 per job on average, according to WBMA. The Irondale City Council was scheduled to take up the proposed incentive agreement at its meeting Wednesday, though the station's report does not indicate how the vote would turn out.
The incentive package on the table totals approximately $384,761. That breaks down into $245,936 in property tax abatements spread over 10 years — not counting taxes earmarked for education — plus $138,825 in sales and use tax abatements covering construction and equipment purchases, per the same report.
Strings Attached to the Tax Break
The deal isn't a blank check. Under the proposed agreement, Sandblast could lose some or all of its tax incentives if it fails to meet performance benchmarks, and the company would be required to substantially meet its investment and payroll projections by December 31, 2032. The report does not specify when hiring would begin, what kinds of positions would be available, or whether recruitment would prioritize local workers.
If approved, construction on the expansion is expected to start in December, with completion targeted for the end of 2029 — a multi-year build timeline for a company that specializes in candy manufacturing and the interactive dispensing systems tied to it.
How It Stacks Up to Other Irondale Deals
Abatements like this fall under Alabama's Chapter 9B framework, which allows cities, counties, and public industrial authorities to grant tax breaks for new and expanding qualifying projects, subject to certain limitations, according to the Alabama Department of Revenue. State rules allow noneducational county and city property-tax abatements to run for up to 20 years, with data processing centers eligible for longer terms, per department guidance.
Irondale has leaned on these tools before. The council approved a 10-year non-educational property tax abatement along with construction sales-tax relief for Fluid Solutions' relocation to a 43,000-square-foot facility on Commerce Boulevard, a project the city projected would create 49 jobs and roughly $5.05 million in capital investment, according to citizenportal.ai. That agreement landed on the council's consent agenda in January.
Further back, Irondale approved tax abatements to help Motion Industries expand, according to a 2018 piece in ComebackTown, which did not specify the approval date or abatement amount. The same article recalled Irondale using incentives in 2004 to lure the Tom Williams dealerships away from Birmingham to the Grants Mill Automotive Mall — a move Birmingham answered two years later by offering Walmart $11 million to relocate from Irondale to Eastwood Mall. Whether those older deals compare directly to the Sandblast proposal in scope or terms isn't established by the available record.
For now, the Sandblast expansion remains a proposal awaiting council action, with the company's job and payroll projections — and the tax breaks tied to them — hinging on performance benchmarks that stretch out to the end of 2032.
