County Manager Avery Frick said a special source tax credit from the state allowed Chester to be more competitive to "entice" the company, which has so far only been identified by the county as "Project Chester."

Chester County officials declined to name the company that will locate there but said they will make an official announcement at 10 a.m. Tuesday.

Two Lexington County Council members told The (Columbia) State newspaper this week that Poly-America, a private plastics operation based in Texas, chose Chester over Lexington for a $100 million manufacturing plant along Interstate 77 in Chester County. The plant will bring about 400 jobs.

The incentives offered by Chester are "state incentives and state driven," Frick said. The high unemployment in Chester allows the county to offer a better tax credit, he said.

Frick would not release information Friday about the specific incentives, in actual dollar amounts, that were offered to the new client.

Chester offered the company a fee-in-lieu-of-taxes arrangement that's standard in industry recruiting. But 72 percent of the money paid in fees will go back to the company for infrastructure needs, according to county documents.

But the fee-in-lieu-of offer has a condition, Frick said.

"If the company doesn't make an investment in the county or give the jobs in the time they said they would, then that money has to be refunded to the county," Frick said.

Lexington County offered Poly-America $16.2 million in tax incentives over 20 years, according to documents of the package its council approved.

"What the state has allowed smaller counties like Chester to do is to make the field more level," Frick said. "The state makes it so we can entice a company to come to our region."