Lamb Weston broke ground this month on a $3.4 million storage center in Pasco, Wash. The 50,000-square-foot building is keyed to an expansion of the frozen potato company’s Richland, Wash., manufacturing center, where it is investing $200 million to build a second french fry line.
Lamb Weston is the largest buyer of Washington-grown potatoes.
“With the expansion in Richland, we’re going to need more potatoes, so we’re going to need more potato storage,” says Shelby Stoolman, spokeswoman for Lamb Weston.
Construction in Richland is on track to open the line this fall as planned, Stoolman says. The expansion is anticipated to add 128 jobs in Richland and will increase Lamb Weston’s appetite for Mid-Columbia potatoes by 300 million pounds a year. No new jobs are associated with the Pasco storage project, which is being built by Teton West.
Lamb Weston Holdings Inc. employs more than 4,000 people in the Mid-Columbia. Its Tri-City operations include the Richland campus, corporate offices in Kennewick, processing plants throughout the region, and a farm.
Source: Tri-City Herald