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Area Development - Site Selection, Facility Planning and Workforce Development

Providence Foods To Establish Canning Plant In Lake Providence, Louisiana

12/01/2014
Providence Foods will establish a more than 12,000-square-foot food canning plant in Lake Providence, Louisiana. The new manufacturing facility will produce tomatoes, relishes and sauces through a project that will create 24 new direct jobs.

Partners Reynold Minsky, who owns Minsky Pecan Market in Lake Providence, and Grady Brown, who owns Panola Pepper Corp. just north of town, are installing new food processing equipment in a former Lake Providence grocery store building. The project will include an initial $490,000 capital investment.

Minsky and Brown will be joined by food industry veteran Doug Moran, who will be a marketing principal in the new venture. Providence Foods will distribute a variety of vegetables and relishes in glass jars, with sliced green tomatoes, jalapeño relish, chow chow and barbecue sauce among the featured items. Larger containers of the company’s food products will be marketed to institutional customers. Providence Foods also will produce similar, private-label food items for sale by other companies.

“We agreed to go into a partnership and move forward together with this business as an extension of our area’s food heritage and an outgrowth of our individual food businesses,” Minsky said. “We’re doing this for Lake Providence as well. We want to do everything possible to help Lake Providence and help as many people as possible get jobs. We’re also taking an old building, renovating it and placing it back into commerce as a viable processing plant.”

Providence Foods will begin construction activities and equipment installation immediately, with a target of beginning commercial operations in the first quarter of 2015. Hiring will begin soon and be completed in 2015.

Louisiana Economic Development began working directly with Providence Foods on the potential project in October 2014. To secure the project, the State of Louisiana offered the company a competitive incentive package that includes a $245,000 Economic Development Award Program grant that will offset infrastructure costs for the Town of Lake Providence, which will own the canning plant site. In addition, Providence Foods is expected to utilize the state’s Enterprise Zone and Industrial Tax Exemption programs.

Governor Bobby Jindal said, “Louisiana’s food production is consistently celebrated around the world because we have a thriving agriculture industry that continues to be one of our state’s greatest assets. Our economy is booming because local businesses like Providence Foods continue to invest in our state and cultivate great homegrown products. Indeed this new economic development win will extend our state’s legacy as a famous food producer while generating great new jobs for families in Lake Providence and the Northeast Region.”

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