ConAgra Foods Lamb Weston brand recently expanded its processing facility in Boardman, Oregon. The 505,000-square-foot food manufacturing hub, receiving a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design Silver certification awarded by the U. S. Green Building Council.

The processing facility, known as Boardman East, produces french fries and other frozen potato products from potatoes harvested primarily in the Columbia Basin. “This certification is the result of work done to complete a 340,000 square foot addition to an existing building. The addition began operations in June, 2014. The Silver certification applies to both the existing structure and the addition,” company officials said.

The company recently announced plans to further expand the facility with an additional line for making chopped and formed items like hash brown patties and potato puffs.

"We approached the addition in Boardman the way we approach all of our projects – with an eye for efficient and sustainable operations," said Rick Martin, Vice President, Global Operations at Lamb Weston. "We learned a lot from our experience with our LEED Platinum facility in Delhi, Louisiana, and we brought the best of what we learned to the design and construction of the addition in Boardman."

To earn LEED Silver certification, a building is evaluated by the USGBC on a number of specific criteria: sustainable sites (protecting the environment), water efficiency, energy and atmosphere, materials and resources, indoor environmental quality, and the innovation and design process. A feature of the Lamb Weston LEED Silver facility include: Heat from par-fry equipment is captured and reused throughout the process, which decreases the facility’s use of natural gas by approximately 20%. The heat energy saved annually through the capture and reuse of exhausted heat is the equivalent of the energy used to power more than 5,000 homes.