NATCHEZ — When tanking oil prices slumped below $40 a barrel during the summer of 2015, economic development recruiting became a whole lot harder.

“The middle of ’15 was pretty rough,” Natchez Inc. Executive Director Chandler Russ said. “The oil market was in decline, and everybody was trying to decide what direction they wanted to go. When it went silent, it hurt us, both locally (in the job market) and from a project standpoint.”

Since then, however, Natchez Inc. has seen “a significant increase” in prospective projects not related to the energy sector, Russ said, and that could make all the difference in 2016.

“These are companies that range from forest products to food processing to metals related businesses,” he said. “We have 16 active clients right now that represent about $2.7 billion in potential capital investment, and they range from a $1 million to over $ billion. We were happy to see that the end of ’15 shows us some resilience and gave us a bump going into ’16. We’ve been extremely busy toward the end of the year.”

Natchez Inc. Chair Sue Stedman said the area has had some good site visits from prospects lately.

“I think we have some good possibilities, and we are continuing to work with those partners who have already come here — von Drehle, Great River Industries, Elevance, Genesis — and address any expansion needs they have as well as pursue those new projects,” she said.

Russ said two bright spots for 2016 will come in the continued development of the von Drehle and Delta-Energy projects.

Von Drehle purchased the former Mississippi River Pulp recycling plant in early 2013. Over the past year, the company has been installing a dryer and other machinery necessary for the manufacture of tissue paper — which would add a new product line at the facility — and should complete that work in 2016, Russ said.

“They will continue to hire people all the way throughout ’16, probably adding an additional 100 jobs or so from where they currently are today as they come online,” he said.

At Delta-Energy, a company that uses a proprietary process to render used rubber for carbon solids and hydrocarbon liquids used in rubber compounds, the construction the first of its eight production lines has been completed.

“They should move into the construction of line 2 over the next 30 to 45 days,” Russ said. “We know their runs on line one have been successfully accepted by their major customer. They have tested the product, looked at it in the lab and said it looks good, and their orders are coming in on that, so their orders are starting to ramp up.”

Delta has approximately 30 employees now, and should add another 15 to 20 per line, he said.

At Elevance — a company which committed in 2011 to bring 165 with the development of a biorefinery at the former Delta Biofuels — how things are going will depend on the oil market. The company released an unspecified number of its Natchez workers earlier this year, with company officials citing slow oil conditions.

“There are two factors there — one is world oil markets, which they don’t control, and then there is needed sales of their product,” Russ said. “As oil markets get cheaper and cheaper, it gets harder for them to do the placement of their drop-in products. We do expect them to continue to do some biodiesel runs and production out there during ‘16, but that is not the big job creation that we need out of them and the biorefinery side.”

Recovery in the oil market will benefit more than just Elevance, and Russ said he’s hoping to see that happen in the coming year.

“We definitely need oil prices for our region to rebound in ‘16, and there are pundits who say ‘16 is going to have some rebound, and others are saying it is not going to rebound. We really need it to go in the other direction to get some stability under our existing energy sector and the potential to recruit in that sector.”

With that hope, the energy sector — as well as the other projects in metal fabrication, forestry and food processing — will be a focus for developers in the coming year.

“All of that is really based on our assets we have got in place, our natural resources in the area,” Russ said. “We feel like those four sectors really have us in an area that will continue to stand out and see us be more competitive in those areas than in other sectors.”