Two manufacturers plan to do major, multimillion-dollar expansions in El Paso, adding almost 140 jobs.
Minnesota’s Flagstone Foods’ recent acquisition of a top, national snack nuts brand is prompting an $28.2 million expansion of its nuts processing factory and distribution facilities next to the El Paso airport, adding 91 employees in coming weeks to its 450-person workforce.
Also, El Paso family-owned Prod Design & Analysis plans an almost $6 million expansion of its East Side factory that designs and builds manufacturing equipment, adding 48 engineering and other technical jobs over three years to its 120-person workforce.
Both companies are to receive city tax incentives for their projects. Flagstone also is to get county incentives.
The planned expansions come on the heels of other recently announced El Paso-area factory plans: Ireland’s Eaton Corp., is to put a second, 600-worker factory in West El Paso; Taiwan’s Hota Industrial Manufacturing is to build a 350-worker auto-parts factory in Santa Teresa, New Mexico, on the outskirts of El Paso’s west city limits; and France’s Schneider Electric recently opened its fourth West El Paso factory, adding another 400 employees by the end of the year.
The latest announcements highlight this area as “a manufaturing epicenter, drawing in globally successful companies,” Jon Barela, chief executive officer of the Borderplex Alliance, said in a statement. Borderplex is a regional economic development organization based in El Paso.
Harry Overly, Flagstone CEO, said the main driver for the company’s El Paso expansion is its acquisition in May of the Emerald Nuts brand from the Campbell Soup Co.
Emerald has about $100 million in annual sales, substantially adding to Flagstone’s annual sales of around $700 million, Overly said. The company’s main business is producing private-label snack nuts products for major retailers.
Flagstone is owned by Atlas Holdings, a Connecticut investment firm.
El Paso picked over North Carolina factory
El Paso beat Flagstone’s North Carolina factory to do most of the Emerald Nuts production, Overly said. El Paso also will continue to produce private-label products. The company also has an Alabama factory.
Flagstone’s three-building manufacturing and warehouse/distribution complex, in the Butterfield Trail Industrial Park on El Paso airport-owned land in East-Central El Paso, has been operating more than 30 years. Flagstone took over operations in 2019. The aging, nondescript buildings are just across Leigh Fisher Boulevard from the airport’s passenger terminal.
“There’s something to be said for the passion that our El Paso team has, the (good work) culture that we have down there. It’s one of our best-performing operations,” Overly said. The average employee tenure is almost six years, best among its factories, he said.
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The El Paso incentives also played a part in the decision, he said. El Paso City Council recently approved a term sheet authorizing mostly property tax rebates of up to $985,791 over 10 years for the expansion if Flagstone meets requirements. That could grow to $1.1 million if Flagstone uses Workforce Solutions Borderplex to hire the new employees.
El Paso County Commissioners Court also recently approved a term sheet authorizing up to $254,079 in tax rebates over five years for the project if requirements are met.
Flagstone plans to convert some warehousing space into factory space with the installation of several packaging lines, a roasting line, and additional office space, Overly said.
The new production is expected to begin late this year or early next year.
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“We will start hiring right away,” Overly said. Finding workers, especially a younger generation of workers, is sometimes difficult, but “El Paso is much more of a reasonable market in terms of being able to find labor,” Overly said.
Wages start at $16.83 for lower-skill jobs, plus health insurance and other fringe benefits. Production line operators start at $19.47 per hour. It also employs engineers at the El Paso plant. The company provides opportunities to move to higher jobs, he said.
Jobs will be posted on Flagstone’s website: flagstonefoods.com/careers
Prod Design looks to expand in other high-tech industries
Prod Design, a 20-year-old company started by El Paso native Pablo Rodriguez after he received engineering degrees at the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology, plans to add a 30,000 square-foot addition to its facility at 1255 Peter Cooper Drive., in an industrial area in far East El Paso.
The addition will cost about $4.4 million to build and about $1.5 million to equip, Rodriguez said.
The company’s main business is designing and building equipment for mostly medical-device manufacturers in Juárez. However, Rodriguez wants to expand into building systems for the semiconductor industry. He’s also looking at trying to get into the aerospace industry with help from the University of Texas at El Paso. A UTEP-led coalition last year won a $40 million federal grant to help small manufacturers in El Paso become part of the aerospace and defense industry supply chain.
The City Council recently approved providing up to $188,774 in mostly property tax rebates over 10 years for the Prod expansion. The incentives were important in moving forward with the project, Rodriguez said.
Prod will hire 48 people over three years, with about half those jobs engineers and the others assembly technicians, and tool and die makers, Rodriguez said. About a third of its 120-employee workforce is engineers, he said. Those jobs pay around $70,000 to $80,000 a year. Assembly technicians get from $18 to $25 per hour.
Jobs are posted on Prod’s website: prod-design.com/contact
Vic Kolenc may be reached at 546-6421; [email protected]; @vickolenc on Twitter, now known as X.
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