Midtown’s innovation hub of Tech Square has a new company among its ranks, with agriculture and food giant Cargill joining the likes of Home Depot, Delta Air Lines and Chick-fil-A.
On Thursday, Cargill held a celebration for the opening of its space on Spring Street in the complex occupied by NCR Atleos and NCR Voyix. Cargill said it plans to base about 400 people over the next few years at the Midtown office in roles focused on supply chain reliability and sustainability.
Cargill is subleasing three floors of the dual-tower campus, so it was able to move in quickly.
Employees began occupying the space in November, said Cargill’s Chief Information and Digital Officer Jennifer Hartsock.
“I was super impatient once we started to narrow our choice down,” Hartsock said. “One key criteria was: how fast can I get tushies in seats?”
Cargill has hired about 50 employees so far, halfway to the target it wanted to hit in its first year. Many of the new hires are coming from the Atlanta area, Hartsock said.
Though not yet bustling with activity, the space is filled with workstations designed for employees to reserve ahead of time and outfitted with artwork symbolic of the company and its mission, from a portrait of former CEO Whitney MacMillan by the late performance artist Denny Dent to an installation of dinner plates affixed to wooden planks.
Headquartered in Minnetonka, Minnesota, Cargill is a massive food corporation involved in producing ingredients like sugar or vegetable oils, trading and distributing grain and raising livestock. Households or restaurants would be hard-pressed to find at least one item in their larder not produced by the company.
It’s the country’s largest privately held company by revenue, according to Forbes, bringing in about $160 billion in 2023. About 160,000 employees work for Cargill across the globe. The company has two other tech hubs: one in Minnesota and another in Bengaluru, India.
Credit: Jason Getz / Jason.Getz@ajc.com
Credit: Jason Getz / Jason.Getz@ajc.com
All of Cargill’s functions would not be possible without technology and innovation, Hartsock said, which made establishing another tech hub all the more attractive.
Cargill chose Atlanta for many of the reasons other large companies land regional offices here: its workforce, concentration of universities within the city limits, its transportation network and existing business community, which has dozens of food and agricultural companies.
But the choice of Atlanta wasn’t a “slam dunk,” Hartsock said. Company executives evaluated several cities in Texas and throughout the Southeast, and eventually narrowed their choice down to Atlanta because it met all of their criteria.
Cargill already has a heavy presence in Georgia, where it employs about 1,100, including a meatpacking facility in Newnan and a soybean processing and oil refinery in Gainesville.
Though the three floors can accommodate about 150 employees each, Cargill has the option to expand into several more floors in its tower if it needs the space.
At a ribbon-cutting ceremony held Thursday for the new space, Gov. Brian Kemp, fresh from delivering the State of the State address at the state Capitol, said the location was the right choice for Cargill — both Tech Square and Georgia itself.
“You’re in the middle of an innovation and tech hub,” Kemp said. “A lot of really great people are working in this area.”
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