GREEN BAY - On Green Bay’s far east side, a $55 million raw pet food production facility rises above the farm fields that surround it.
Carnivore Meat Co.’s new, 235,000-square-foot combined production facility and headquarters stands alone in the 3700 block of Vital Place (formerly a segment of Finger Road), almost a mile east of Nature’s Way’s East Mason Street gummi factory. That’s pretty much where the city meets the town of Humboldt. best dog biscuits
Carnivore expects to begin production at the plant this spring, in order to keep up with soaring demand for its raw, flash-frozen pet food and treats.
Carnivore’s new office, innovation center and production facility will give the company capacity to handle strong business growth and development in the years ahead. The new facility will also help spur more industrial development in the Green Bay region, too.
Its building is the first development in the city of Green Bay’s new Grandview Industrial Park, a 375-acre area that could provide space for years of industrial growth and development.
Here’s a closer look at what’s happening on the city’s far east side.
The new, $55 million, 235,000-square-foot facility under construction right now will give Carnivore the ability to quintuple its current production capacity, said Brian Lakari, Carnivore’s vice president of operations.
The company expects to hire another 110 people to staff the new production space, so it can keep up with expected growth.
To put that in context, Carnivore’s new building is 43,000 square feet larger than the Meijer in Howard but only about two-thirds of the square footage in the Lambeau Field Atrium.
The nearly 30-acre site also gives Carnivore space to double the size of the new production facility when needed.
The bulk of the space will be for production, packaging and storage. Carnivore produces pet food, but Lakari said its production spaces meet standards necessary to produce food for human consumption.
The site also includes 27,000 square feet of office space for Carnivore’s office staff and an innovation center space where private label customers can come in to customize products they pay Carnivore to produce for them.
Carnivore’s business is pets, so it makes sense the company includes facilities and perks for employees’ four-legged family members.
The grounds include an employees-only dog park and the company offers employees pet insurance as a benefit.
And, since workers can bring their dogs to work, the facility will be equipped with doggie doors so pets can move through the building easily.
Lanny Viegut founded Carnivore Meat Co. in Green Bay in 2009 and the company has grown rapidly since.
The company uses fresh meats and flash freezes them to make raw pet food and treats. You can find its products under the Vital Essentials brand name, but Carnivore also produces private label raw pet foods, too.
Carnivore started production in an Ontario Road building and has since expanded to three locations in order to keep up with growing demand for its products. Its strong year-over-year sales growth has earned Carnivore inclusion in the Inc. 5000 list of fastest growing private companies for five years straight.
It now produces the top freeze-dried cat treat brand on Amazon and Chewy, and its flash-frozen minnows are a popular treat for dogs and cats. Carnivore products are sold in every state and 14 countries.
Carnivore will deploy a new, improved version of flash-freeze production process in the new facility that builds upon the process Carnivore has used for the last decade-plus.
Lakari said Carnivore will also incorporate robots and cobots, which work alongside humans to accomplish various tasks.
The office building’s first three feet of concrete incorporates geothermal heating to warm the air closest to building’s glass exterior. The building will also feature a sustainable cooling system.
Larkari said a third-party group will monitor the company’s carbon footprint to identify ways to improve energy usage and efficiency, too.
Carnivore’s new headquarters and production space occupies about 27.8 acres of land north of East Mason Street in an area the city designated as the Grandview Industrial Park.
The industrial park includes about 50 acres of land along East Mason Street east of Grandview Road owned by the city and Carnivore. The industrial park could expand up to 375 acres, though, mostly south of East Mason Street.
Once fully developed, the city estimates the industrial park could add $65 million in property value to the city’s tax rolls. Carnivore's plant alone is expected to add $35 million of property value to the tax rolls.
The city in 2022 created a new tax increment financing district, or TIF, to pay for extending the roads, sewers, water pipes and other utilities to the industrial park land. A TIF enables the city to borrow money to acquire property, extend utilities and/or support development in an area. The city then uses newly-generated tax revenue from the resulting development to pay the debt off.
The Grandview TIF plan estimates the city will spend about $17 million on infrastructure, streets, land acquisition, developer incentives and administrative costs related to development of the area. Some of that includes incentives for Carnivore, which will be rebated 20% of the property taxes it pays on the new plant.
The city created Grandview at a time when industrial space to produce, warehouse and distribute products is in short supply and strong demand.
Manny Vasquez, a senior vice president of business development with NAI Pfefferle, said only about 2% of the Green bay area's industrial space is vacant, well below the 3.5% statewide and 5% nationally. He said manufacturers, transportation companies and ecommerce retailers need modern space and called it encouraging the city and other northeastern Wisconsin communities continue to assemble and market land for industrial uses.
Blue Buffalo Dog Food Contact Jeff Bollier at (920) 431-8387 orjbollier@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter at @JeffBollier.