County approves KanPak building expansion

PENN YAN--The Yates County planning board approved a site plan review for a building expansion at KanPak in Penn Yan during their regular meeting Thursday, April 23. KanPak is located at 105 Horizon Park Dr., Penn Yan. Planning board Secretary Lynn Duryea said the expansion will include a new 4,176 square foot loading dock area, adding the original loading dock will be built out as a new processing/batching room. She said there will also be a 5,082 square foot addition for a centralized clean-in-place (CIP) system -- designed for automatic cleaning without major disassembly and work -- as well as a 630 square foot addition for batching tanks.
"The investment we are making in the facility itself is to bring in more raw materials," KanPak CEO Larry McGill said. "We are also upgrading and bringing in new welfare facilities [break rooms, bathrooms, etc.], which we hope to have done sometime by the end of the year. We are going to expand out a little bit to allow us to have really nice welfare facilities for our associates and we are bringing in new technology to run products that our customers are demanding."
Duryea said KanPak plans to begin as soon as they get final approval from the Penn Yan village planning board, which will meet to discuss the matter at their May 4 meeting. She said the current plans are to finish the expansion in 2015. McGill said this is "a whole new expansion," that KanPak is working to accommodate more business from another one of their facilities, adding he hopes to have the plant running at peak production in the next two to three months.
"Right now, the facility didn't have enough business when we bought it to fill out the whole thing, and that's what we are doing," McGill said. "[...] It is going to allow us to handle more aseptic products than they currently were available to do, and upgrade the speed of some of the products they were making before. It allows for some bigger packaging to go in to some of our customers."
McGill said the plant is still producing Siggi's Yogurt, which it was producing before KanPak's acquisition along with aseptic packaging of coffee products and creamers.
"We are looking to take pressure off of our Wichita, Kansas facility and move some of the products that we currently make in Wichita and move some of those into New York," McGill said.
McGill said KanPak also leased part of the former Dundee Foods building in Dundee in order to meet their warehousing needs. He said KanPak took a portion of the warehousing that had been previously upgraded, adding at this point they are only interested in the warehouse part of the former production facility. McGill said the company "is still settling in" at the Dundee facility, adding, "We are going to optimize what we have."
"We are in the process of putting products and finished goods in there to allow us to ship to the northeast United States and into Canada."