SALINA, KAN. โ The Schwanโs Co., a business unit of the South Korean food manufacturer CJ CheilJedang, on May 19 held a ribbon-cutting ceremony celebrating the completion of a 400,000-square-foot expansion of its pizza manufacturing plant in Salina, Kan.
The project includes pizza production lines capable of making 100 million pizzas a year, shipping and receiving docks, and office space. A total of 225 new jobs will be added as part of the expansion.
โIn 2020, we announced to the Salina community a bold new project that would enable us to continue to make delicious pizzas for millions of families for decades to come,โ said Dimitrios Smyrnios, chief executive officer of Schwanโs Co. โIn March of this year, we realized our dream, and our teams began making pizzas in our new facility.โ
In addition to the just completed 400,000-square-foot expansion, Schwanโs in late 2022 said it will be adding 140,000 square feet to the facility, which will more than double the size of the center that was built in 2006. Construction is set to begin in 2023 and be completed in early 2025, bringing total distribution center space to 245,000 square feet once the project is completed, Schwanโs said.
Schwanโs said the additional distribution center space will be used to increase storage for the pizzas produced at the plant. The expansion will include a 38,000-pallet position racking system with three automated pallet cranes, according to the company.
Schwanโs has operated a pizza plant in Salina since 1970, when it acquired the Tonyโs pizza brand and plant from a Salina businessman. Over the past 53 years the plant has grown from 18,000 square feet to nearly 1 million square feet.
