SK Foods celebrates grand opening of Cleveland plant
A group of officials cutting the ribbon on the Cleveland SK Foods plant at Spring Branch Industrial Park.
CLEVELAND, Tenn. (WDEF)- Bradley County’s newest plant held its grand opening Monday.
Your next breakfast or lunch sandwich may very well be produced right behind me the brand new SK Foods plant in Cleveland.
This new investment on 60 acres at the Spring Branch Industrial Park marks the next chapter for Cleveland’s economy.
Cleveland Mayor Kevin Brooks remarked, “We prayed for this day for a long time, so all I got to say is, Praise the Lord for SK Food Group!”
SK Foods, founded in 1942 in the shipyards of Seattle, now manufacture a variety of sandwiches and wraps.
The company’s president Dustin Dixon said, “These are all frozen items that are bought by retail customers, food services, and convenience stores. We are co-manufacturers, so SK Foods isn’t a brand that you would find on a retail shelf. Instead you would find our products under a different brand name in some of the largest brands here in North America.”
It is their fourth such plant, joining facilities in Phoenix, Arizona, Columbus, Ohio, and Reno, Nevada, and their first in the Southeast.
They say this vision is a product of the investment Bradley County and Cleveland have placed in their vocational education.
Dixon said, “The PIE Center is something we have not seen anywhere across the country and as we were looking across the Southeast to build our fourth facility, that was one of those differentiators in this community, that connection with the schools and the vocational training. We have skilled labor. We have machines, automated machines, that requires skilled labor.”
They say that the center will continue to produce the next crop of workers.
Damon Daiglesh, the plant’s senior manager, said, “The PIE Center is going to really help us as we grow, and help us find workers that don’t have food experience and get them trained up over there. We have similar equipment that you see here on our production floor over at the PIE Center that is functional.”
The facility also has a test kitchen, where the next big sandwich could be made.
Governor Bill Lee and First Lady Maria Lee took part in a taste test of several sandwiches.
Dixon said, “We work together with their developers to create what their customer base is looking for. We have readily available ingredients that we can pull together and really go to the floor and see how we would manufacture that, instead of sending samples back and forth through the mail.”
Dixon says that once this plant is fully operational, there will be over 800 employees here at this facility in Cleveland.
They currently employ over 200 people.
