Dreyer's Grand Ice Cream Holdings Inc is breaking ground on a $180 million project to triple the capacity of its Laurel MD manufacturing facility, add a warehouse to serve the eastern United States, and create more than 300 new jobs by the time the project is completed in 2007.
The Laurel Operations Center in Howard County, Maryland, now supports 220 ice cream makers and staff who produce Nestlé and Edy's frozen snacks. The facility, which has been dedicated to frozen snacks, will more than double the number of workers in three years to about 520, and will add nearly 600,000 square feet of production and warehouse space, 10 frozen snack production lines, and two packaged ice cream lines. This will enable production of packaged ice cream products like Haagen-Dazs, as well as Nestlé and Edy's frozen snacks. Total square footage for the Laurel plant will be nearly 700,000 square feet when completed.
This expansion will include a new 200,000-square-foot ice cream warehouse that will hold up to 23,000 pallets of ice cream and frozen snacks for shipment to stores, restaurants, and ice cream parlors across the eastern United States.
