BROOKINGS, SD-Bel Brands USA, a division of Paris-based Fromageries Bel, plans to spend $100 million to build a new cheese-making plant on a new industrial park here. The company, which manufactures and markets the Laughing Cow brand, will use this 170,000-square-foot plant to make its Mini Babybel snacking cheese.
The US arm of the firm is based in Chicago and has two existing plants in Leitchfield, KY and Little Chute, WI. With sales doubling in the past four years, the company started a search for a new plant site, considering locations in eight states including Iowa, Idaho and Michigan. Jones Lang LaSalle and TC Jacoby and Co. assisted the firm in the search, and helped select this 48-arcre site along 32nd Avenue, near the Interstate 29 corridor.
After a planned groundbreaking this summer, the company hopes to fully operational with a first phase of the plant by 2014, with a production capacity of 22 million pounds of cheese. The second phase of the plant would be built per market demand, likely by 2017, the company said in a statement.
Kris Bjorson, the JLL broker on the deal, tells GlobeSt.com that the company picked South Dakota because of its well-known dairy farms. “The cheese business, of course, needs to be near the milk business,” he says.
The dairy industry has always been an important component of the state’s agricultural exports, and the Bel Brands plant will help the state expand its capacity and market share, said South Dakota Gov. Dennis Daugaard in the statement. “Having an internationally respected company like Bel Brands as our newest corporate citizen tells the world that we are open and ready for business from anywhere around the globe,” he said.
Bjorson says that a lot of food and beverage industry firms pulled back operations during the recession, with the result that there’s strong pent-up demand for new manufacturing and other commercial properties. “We expect to see more similar announcements in the industry this year, of companies trying to improve their productivity or proximity to customers,” he says.
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