SK Food Group holds facility groundbreaking ceremony in Cleveland
UPDATE:
CLEVELAND, Tenn. (WDEF) – Back in January, one of America’s largest food manufacturers announced they were building their latest distribution facility in Bradley County.
On Tuesday, they broke ground.
The skeleton of the future plant at Spring Branch Industrial Branch is already starting to take shape.
Groundbreaking ceremony (SK Food Group)
Dustin Dixon, President of SK Food Group, said, “Once operations become running, we are going to have a full end to end operation with a receiving end through manufacturing, pack off, and shipping at the other end, it is going to be a complete linear process.”
The site will be constructed in three phases by the Tippmann Group and will eventually span nearly a quarter of a mile.
Its location near exit 20 on I-75 leaders say was a process started 14 years ago in a meeting with TDOT.
Bradley County Mayor D. Gary Davis said, “The state said, ‘well you’ve got to have something, a bird in hand of some sort if we’re ever going to build that interchange.’ So, once we had the park bought, they no longer had any excuses. We got the interchange and we’re seeing what is beginning to happen.”
Dixon added, “We hear constantly from the community, from folks like Doug Berry, from business leaders who are saying, “Hey, anything we can do for you, anyone we can connect you with.” HR folks from other companies invited our HR team to get involved in the community now.”
Dixon says plans for the facility are essentially set in stone and expects the first portions of the facility to be operational in the next 18 to 24 months.
ORIGINAL POST:
CLEVELAND, Tenn. (WDEF) — SK Food Group held a groundbreaking ceremony Tuesday morning for their new food processing and distribution facility.
City, county and state officials attended the groundbreaking for this new 552,000 square-foot facility.
SK Food Group says they expect this project to create 840 new jobs by 2030.
They will also be partnering with the PIE Center in Bradley County to provide specialized training.
The company has a three-part phase in building the facility. The first phase, including sandwich assembly and food handling technology, should be finished in 2025.
They also plan to incorporate environmental, social and governance focused initiatives. Some of those include harvesting rainwater and creating a covered pavilion for employee breaks.
“We are very excited to be officially breaking ground on our newest state-of-the-art facility,” said Dustin Dixon, President of SK Food Group. “We are also pleased that we will be generating 840 new jobs in the Cleveland region and leveraging Cleveland’s best-in-class PIE Center, coupled with our own proprietary training and educational programs, to provide skills development to community members.”
