Golden State Foods builds meat plant, politician vows to eat more burgers
A mix of senior company officials and local politicians took part in a ceremony to break ground at the site of Golden State Foods' future processing site in Opelika on Friday 4 March.
The 165,000sq ft facility is expected to be built by the middle of 2017. Golden State Foods hopes production will start sometime in the third quarter of the year.
‘Thrilled’
The company has not revealed how much the new facility cost, although several news sites have reported the figure to be around $63m.
“We are thrilled to become a part of the Opelika community, a wonderful city that shares our common values,” said CEO Mark Wetterau in a press statement. “We started as a small meat company in Los Angeles nearly seven decades ago and I cannot think of a better way to celebrate our 70th anniversary next year than with the opening of this meat plant in Opelika.”
‘Significant project’
Speaking at the ceremony in Alabama on Friday, Golden State Foods' executive vice-president Neil Cracknell said the site would help the company “meet our growing processing needs throughout the US and to better serve our customers”.
He added: “[It] will provide us with more space dedicated to our Protein Products production and will leave our Liquid Products business more space within our current facility.”
Golden State Foods executives Cracknell and Wetterau were joined at the ceremony by the Opelika Mayor Gary Fuller and Alabama’s secretary of commerce Greg Canfield.
“Alabama’s economic development team works hard every day to bring great companies like Golden State Foods to our state, and we’ll continue to support this significant project in Opelika to build on the partnership we’ve developed with the company,” said Canfield, adding that he would “eat more quarter pounders and big macs”.
