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he opening of the Georgia Institute of Technology’s Food Processing Technology Research Facility in 2004 may well trigger a boost in high-tech investment in the metro Atlanta area. Obvious beneficiaries of the US$9.4 million center are commercial food processors that adopt systems developed by the Food Processing Technology Division of the Georgia Tech Research Institute and the faculty and staff associated with it. But high-tech companies hoping to commercialize products and processes developed for the food processing industry will deliver an economic boost to north central Georgia and other areas in the South that deliver proximity to the research facility in Atlanta.
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“Our main focus is on economic development and industrial support,” says J. Craig Wyvill, division chief, Food Processing Technology Division, at the Georgia Tech Research Institute. “We’ve had some influence in the past on companies that have located to be closer to our research capability, and we think this will continue to increase that possibility.”
The first phase of the 46,000-sq.-ft. (4,275-sq.-m.) center is scheduled to open in the summer of 2004. The facility will consolidate food-processing research in such areas as facility productivity efficiency, environmental issues and food safety.
“We’re working with high-tech imaging systems, robotics and other IT systems, including advanced sensors, portable and wearable computer systems and the use of augmented reality on the plant floor,” Wyville explains. “We want to marry some emerging technologies with food processing opportunities.”
One example is a high-speed, low-cost robotics system for case packing in the food industry, which is a cost-intensive function ripe for automation. Researchers at the Georgia Tech Research Institute developed a suitable robot, but it worked so well, “We were reaching the upper limit of mechanical integrity – parts were breaking,” says Wyville. “We found a local, advanced-technology development company with a product that does ‘active dampening’ to deal with vibration excitation. They have integrated their technology onto this robot, and now we have a commercial product, and they will be key in commercializing it.”
Food processors showed little favoritism in terms of location in 2003, with virtually all areas of the U.S. and a mixture of non-U.S. regions winning new projects. Food clusters exist, certainly, such as those in southern Idaho’s Magic Valley, California’s Central Valley, areas throughout the Corn Belt and many other locations. But the diversity of locations winning food-processing investments so far this year is testament to the many factors that influence a location decision, with labor availability and proximity to raw materials among the most important factors. Training considerations are now joining this first tier of site-selection criteria.
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“Investment in training is especially relevant when as much as 95 percent of the equipment used in the industry is manufactured in Europe,” says Mike Mullis, a Memphis, Tenn.-based site location consultant. Mullis’ clients have included Anheuser-Busch, Frito-Lay and J.M. Smucker’s. “The relative lack of skilled operators in the U.S. requires companies to import the expertise during installation and start-up,” he points out.
Access to an adequate milk supply was key to Glanbia Foods’ selection of Clovis, N.M., for its newest cheddar cheese and whey-protein products plant. This $192-million project was the September 2003 Incentives Deal of the Month on Site Selection’s Online Insider.
New York State gained several food-processing projects in 2003, with one – Seneca Foods’ Rochester plant – making the list of the top 20 largest plants (see chart, above). East Syracuse, N.Y., is the site of a 35,000-sq.-ft. (3,250-sq.-m.) manufacturing and packaging facility for Byrne Dairy. And Sysco Food Services, the largest distributor of food service products in the U.S., has added 60,000 sq. ft. (5,600 sq. m.) of new freezer and warehouse space to its Syracuse campus, bringing the facility to 300,000 sq. ft. (27,870 sq. m.).
National Beef Packing Co. is expanding its Dodge City, Kan., meat processing plant, which will
result in 900 new jobs. And more than 700 new jobs will be created at Anheuser-Busch’s Williamsburg, Va., brewery when a $200-million expansion is completed in 2005. The brewer is modernizing and redesigning the plant with new production lines, utility systems, logistics systems and other features. According to Dr. Donald Boudreaux, chairman of the economics department at George Mason University, the company’s spending on the project will infuse the Virginia economy with approximately $437 million throughout the life of the project.
