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Plant Manager Shane Gesbeck of Arizona Canning Company discusses the company's Tucson operations and why they chose Tucson |
What is the history of Arizona Canning Company/La Costeña in Tucson?
In order to establish a U.S. headquarters, Arizona Canning Company was purchased by La Costeña back in June of 2006; it is a large Mexican owned company out of Mexico City. The plant that they purchased here was originally a Slim Fast Foods plant, which was built in 2001, closed in 2004 and then purchased by La Costeña in 2006. The original purpose of the facility was for beverage production. Under La Costeña we manufacture refried beans and whole beans under the La Costeña and the La Sierra and Sun Vista Brands.
At the facility we manufacture refried bean and whole bean products. We also manufacture our own cans. On a typical day we’ll run about 40 tons of whole beans or dry beans through our systems. We manufacture in five different can sizes, and we manufacture kidney beans, pinto beans, black beans, garbanzo beans, and again in the black and the pinto we do that in both whole bean and refried varieties.
Why did La Costeña decide to establish its U.S. presence in Tucson and what benefits does the city offer a manufacturing facility like La Costeña ?
La Costeña wanted to establish a US presence, and the facility that was available here, the former Slim Fast foods facility, offered everything they were looking for in a manufacturing facility. We have a state of the art facility, first of all, and that was of course a major part of the decision to bring the U.S. headquarters here. But also Tucson has a very good workforce, in terms of their technical skills and abilities.
Geographically Tucson for distribution works extremely well. We’re right of the Interstate 10 freeway which also connects to Interstate 8 without having to go through Phoenix, so that works well to get to the southern California markets. A lot of our product also ships to the east out of Laredo, TX, so we’re right off of Interstate 10 for that. We also bring in quite a bit of product on rail cars. Beans from the Red River Valley come in on rail cars, and the proximity to rail works well for us.
One of the things that’s nice about Tucson is there is a good manufacturing base already established. Although there may not be a lot of food manufacturing, there’s other manufacturing that if people are used to working around machines and equipment they have the technical ability to do what we’re looking for, because we ask our folks to both operate and maintain the equipment. And we’ve found that we don’t really have an issue finding the people that we’re looking for. We’ve got a pretty good pick of folks here in Tucson that we can bring in. Again, partly because of the facilities that we have, but also Tucson just has a really good base for the employees.
How is Arizona Canning Company planning to expand?
Arizona Canning Company is looking at some expansions. The first piece is we’re adding a 92,000 square foot warehouse for shipping products. The idea right now is that we’re going to be distributing some of the products from other La Costeña facilities through this facility. Back in 2007 Arizona Canning Company purchased the Sun Vista brand and we have been and will continue to distribute the Sun Vista brand through this facility. Plus we have plans to grow beyond our current two brands and as we continue to grow we’ll need more distribution space and facilities. So that’s kind of the first step of the growth that we have planed. Once we start moving into more brands the company’s workforce will continue to expand.
Responses provided by Shane Gesbeck, Plant Manager, Arizona Canning Company |