Inventure Foods, Inc., Phoenix, Ariz., announced plans to add a second manufacturing site to its existing company-owned individually-quick frozen (IQF) berry processing and packaging facility in Lynden, Wash. Operations at the new site, located in Bellingham, Wash., are expected to begin in April.

The 35,000-square-foot cold storage and production facility will act as a dedicated packaging center, and will effectively separate IQF harvest operations from product packaging efforts to offer logistic efficiencies while providing for future gains in IQF processing volume.

"Consumer demand for healthy, natural foods continues to grow, and our Lynden, Wash., berry processing facility operates near capacity as a result," says Terry McDaniel, chief executive officer. "Demand is a great problem to have, so we must constantly identify manufacturing efficiencies that allow for future growth. We added additional IQF equipment last year to allow us to process 55 million pounds of berries annually at our existing facility, and this new building will open up an additional 10,000 square feet of potential IQF space in the future. It will also eliminate a 15-mile trip between our current cold storage location and packaging center, so we realize multiple gains from this single move."

The expansion provides Inventure with more than three times the amount of packaging space than its Lynden, Wash., facility currently provides.