Food waste upcycling company to open $8M Lee County facility.

• Position: Upcycle Co.

A company that upcycles food processing plant waste products is establishing operations in Lee County.

The Upcycle Co., a provider of services to upcycle fats, oils, proteins and nutrient-dense fertilizer from food processing plant waste, will open a facility in Bishopville, according to a news release from the South Carolina governor's office.

The company's approximately $8 million investment will create 22 new jobs over the next five years, the release stated.

Located at 261 Myers Lane in Bishopville, The Upcycle Co.'s Lee County facility is its first South Carolina location, according to the release. The new facility is a partnership between The Upcycle Co. and Belger Farms, a family-run farm with a long history of utilizing organic residuals as a supplemental fertilizer.

Under the partnership, The Upcycle Co. is establishing a treatment facility at Belger Farms that will extract the oils from these residuals, yielding a valuable co-product with end-uses in the fertilizer, cosmetics, energy, animal feed industries and others, the release stated. The remaining organic materials will provide an even higher quality supplemental fertilizer for use on this farm and others in the region.

"Lee County is proximate to many of the plants that generate the source materials that we can upcycle into a range of valuable co-products," The Upcycle Co. CEO Dewey Burke said in the release. "Working with Belger Farms, Lee...