After its planned flagship plant with 250 jobs in Oak Creek became public, Thrive Foods on Friday received an email from a Wisconsin Economic Development Corp. official saying “we’re honored and happy that we are your state of choice.”
That’s according to company CEO and co-founder Steve Palmer, who said the decision to lease a building in Oak Creek came after a search across multiple Midwest states, including Indiana. The Oak Creek plant expected to start operations by the third quarter of 2023 will be the Midwest hub for the Utah-based company that specializes in freeze-drying food for other companies, and to sell under its own brands.
The congratulatory email from WEDC is an example of the level of support Thrive Foods received as it considered putting a plant here. As Palmer noted, the personal touch for economic development officials can make a difference in the final decision on where to create jobs.
“The state involvement is exciting to us; that’s one of the reasons we wanted to come to the state of Wisconsin,” he said. “We did check a couple of states in the Midwest where it might make sense. We tried to take everything into consideration — labor rates, proximity to transportation, mass transit. A lot of it also had to do with looking for someone to partner with from a government standpoint.”
Thrive Foods’ planning for this plant started with the realization that the Midwest has a concentration of current and potential future customers that could hire Thrive Foods to freeze-dry products for pet food, probiotics and other products. Thrive Foods currently has production plants at its headquarters in American Fork, Utah, and in Modesto, California, and New York state.
The two coastal plants came through mergers with other companies. That happened last year after Chicago-based Entrepreneurial Equity Partners invested in Thrive Foods and in the California and New York businesses, Palmer said.
The Wisconsin plant is intended to lower transportation costs and time for Thrive’s work in the Midwest market, Palmer said.
“We’re not done,” he said. “We have ambitions to become the largest in the world, and that means getting out of the United States.”
The Oak Creek plant will be in a 341,000-square-foot speculative building Thrive Foods leased at South 13th Street and West Drexel Avenue. Building owner Frontline Commercial Real Estate announced that lease last week.
Palmer said Thrive Foods could have at least 200 jobs in that building by the end of 2023, with 50 more to come as the company picks up more work in the Midwest. This will be the first new facility Thrive Foods has created, he said, so it will be a flagship in terms of technology and automation.
“It’s the most significant investment we have ever made,” Palmer said. “It’ll be a state-of-the-art facility. We are looking at optimizing our equipment so we have automation as a way of manufacturing. We’ll have the same need for the same number of people, but if we can add automation and make their jobs even easier, then we will.”