RICHMOND, Va. (AP) -- The owner of the nation's biggest tobacco company, Philip Morris USA, has sold a North Carolina cigarette plant it idled in 2009.
Richmond, Va.-based Altria Group Inc. said Monday that the property in Cabarrus County was sold last week to Victory Industrial Park LLC.
The property includes 3.5 million square feet of buildings, including the old cigarette manufacturing facility, warehouses and a utility plant. According to county records, it was sold for $68.5 million.
In 2009, Altria closed the factory that employed 2,500 and moved all of its cigarette manufacturing to its Richmond plant to bring its capacity in line with falling demand for cigarettes industrywide.
The maker of Marlboro cigarettes in the U.S. saw its overall volumes decline about 4 percent to 129.3 billion cigarettes last year.
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