Gerber Products Co. is spending $65 million to expand its Fort Smith plant to include a plastic packaging line.

Gerber Cooks Up
Packaging Project

Food manufacturing, a long-time stalwart of Arkansas industry that employs more than 50,000 in the state, drew new investment recently with a major expansion project in west Arkansas.
        Gerber Products Co., part of the Infant & Baby business unit within the Consumer Health Div. of Novartis AG, has also been part of the Fort Smith economic landscape for nearly 40 years. The company is spending $65 million to expand its facility, which currently produces a wide variety of baby foods, including first, second and third foods, meats, meatsticks, Tender Harvest (organic) and dry cereal.
        The expansion will allow the company to continue its conversion to plastic packaging for its most popular infant and toddler foods. Gerber began its aseptic plastic operations in 2002 at its Fremont, Mich., plant.
        Karen Flatley, plant manager, says the expansion will include new technology, which will enable it to operate the plastic line.
        If you head north for about an hour from Fort Smith on Interstate 540, you find the small town of Rogers as you approach the Missouri border. Here, Cryovac, a subsidiary of Sealed Air Corp., is building a 165,000-sq.-ft. (15,330-sq.-m.) facility with plans to employ 100 by the end of 2003. The plant will be in limited production by the end of the year and in full production by early 2004.
        "Rogers' central location to the U.S. market, its outstanding work force and the excellent cooperation of state and local officials contributed to our decision," says Ray Youngblood, Cryovac's vice president of manufacturing for North America. Cryovac will produce shrink film at the new plant to convert into bags to package food.
        The man who oversees Cryovac's real estate says the site choice was a matter of being near customers. "We looked at numerous sites in four states ---Arkansas, Missouri, Kansas and Oklahoma – which are central to packaging of food," says Ted Bell, vice president of capital planning for Cryovac. "We have a lot of customers in the area because there is a lot of processing of red meat and poultry."

Nestlé USA began production in March at its brand new plant in Jonesboro.

        Nestlé USA's Jonesboro frozen-food plant is the largest recent food-manufacturing project in the state. The 325,000-sq.-ft. (30,200-sq.-m.) facility began production in March, slightly ahead of schedule. First products off the line were Stouffer's Fettuccini Alfredo and Lean Cuisine Everyday Favorites Chicken Chow Mein.
        "While we'd always planned on a mid-2003 start-up, the hiring and training processes have gone so well, we were able to advance the schedule," says Michael L. Nelson Jr., Nestlé plant manager.