Dive Brief:
Greenleaf Foods will buy and build out a 118,000-square-foot Indianapolis food processing plant to ramp up production of Lightlife tempeh products in response to rising demand, parent company Maple Leaf Foods announced. The company expects the purchase to close in early April.
The Indianapolis plant will have an initial production capacity of about 99.2 million pounds of tempeh. Greenleaf Foods estimates the project including the purchase costs to total approximately $100 million. The company expects the plant to be fully operational by the first half of 2022.
This is the second Indiana manufacturing facility that Chicago-based Greenleaf has planned since its launch in 2018. The company announced plans in 2019 to build North America s largest plant-based protein facility in Shelbyville, Indiana. The company said in the tempeh plant announcement that the pandemic and other factors have delayed the project. By acquiring the Indianapolis plant, the company hopes