GREEN BAY – In the far east of Green Bay, a $55 million raw pet food production facility rises above the fields that surround it.
Carnivore Meat Co.’s new, 235,000-square-foot combined production facility and headquarters. stands alone in the 3700 block of Vital Place (formerly part of Finger Road), about a mile east of East Mason Street by the Nature’s Way gummi factory. That’s pretty much where the city meets the town of Humboldt.
Carnivore expects to begin production at the plant this spring, to keep up with rising demand for its raw, flash-frozen food and pet food.
Carnivore’s new office, innovation center and production facility will give the company the capacity to handle strong business growth and development in the coming years. The new facility will also help spur more industrial development in the Green Bay region, too.
Its building is the first development in the city of Green Bay’s new Grandview Industrial Park, a 375-acre site that could provide space for years of industrial growth and development.
Here’s a closer look at what’s happening on the far east side of the city.
How big is the new Carnivore plant? Bigger than Meijer, smaller than Lambeau Field Atrium
The new, $55 million, 235,000-square-foot facility now under construction will give Carnivore the ability to quintuple its current production capacity, said Brian Lakari, Carnivore’s vice president of operations.
The company expects to hire another 110 people to staff the new production space, to keep up with expected growth.
To put that in context, the new Carnivore building is 43,000 square feet larger than the Meijer in Howard but only about two-thirds the square footage of the Lambeau Field Atrium.
The nearly 30-acre site also gives Carnivore the space to double the size of the new production facility when needed.
The new facility includes production space, offices, an innovation center …
The bulk of the space is for production, packaging and storage. The carnivore produces pet food, but Lakari says its production facilities meet the standards required to produce food for human consumption.
The site also includes 27,000 square feet of office space for Carnivore’s office staff and an innovation center space where private label customers can come in to customize the products they pay Carnivore to make for them.
… doggie doors and an employee dog park
Carnivore’s business is pets, so it makes sense that the company includes facilities and perks for employees’ four-legged family members.
The grounds include an employee-only dog park and the company offers pet insurance to employees as a benefit.
And, since workers can bring their dogs to work, the facility is equipped with doggie doors so pets can easily move around the building.
Carnivore is no stranger to rapid sales growth
Lanny Viegut founded Carnivore Meat Co. in Green Bay in 2009 and the company has grown rapidly since then.
The company uses fresh meats and flash-chills them to make raw pet food and treats. You can find its products under the Vital Essentials brand name, but Carnivore also makes private label raw pet food.
Carnivore began production in a building on Ontario Road and has since expanded to three locations to keep up with growing demand for its products. Strong year-over-year sales growth earned Carnivore Inc. inclusion. 5000 list of the fastest growing private companies for five years in a row.
It now produces the top freeze-dried cat treat brands on Amazon and Chewy, and its flash-frozen minnows are a popular treat for dogs and cats. Carnivore products are sold in every state and 14 countries.
Innovations cover energy efficiency, robotics, production
Carnivore will deploy a new and improved version of the flash-freeze production process at the new facility that will build on the process Carnivore has used for the past decade-plus.
Lakari said Carnivore will also include robots and cobots, which work alongside humans to accomplish various tasks.
The first three feet of the office building’s concrete incorporates geothermal heating to heat the air closest to the building’s glass exterior. The building will also feature a sustainable cooling system.
Larkari said a third-party group will monitor the company’s carbon footprint to identify ways to improve energy use and efficiency as well.
Grandview Industrial Park supports Carnivore, future industrial development opportunities
Carnivore’s new headquarters and production space occupies approximately 27.8 acres of land north of East Mason Street in an area designated by the city as the Grandview Industrial Park.
The industrial park includes about 50 acres of land along East Mason Street east of Grandview Road owned by the city and Carnivore. The industrial park could expand to 375 acres, though, mostly south of East Mason Street.
Once fully developed, the city estimates the industrial park could add $65 million in property value to the city’s tax rolls. The Carnivore plant alone is expected to add $35 million of property value to the tax rolls.
The city in 2022 created a new tax increment financing district, or TIF, to pay for the extension of roads, sewers, water pipes and other utilities on the industrial park land. A TIF allows the city to borrow money to acquire property, extend utilities and/or support development in an area. The city then uses newly generated tax revenue from the resulting development to pay off the debt.
The Grandview TIF plan estimates the city will spend about $17 million on infrastructure, streets, land acquisition, developer incentives and administrative costs related to developing the area. Some of those include incentives for Carnivore, which will rebate 20% of the property taxes it pays on the new plant.
Low vacancy means demand for industrial space in the Green Bay area remains strong
The city created Grandview at a time when industrial space to manufacture, store and distribute products was in short supply and in high demand.
Manny Vasquez, a senior vice president of business development with NAI Pfefferle, said only about 2% of the Green bay area’s industrial space is vacant, less than 3.5% statewide and 5% nationally. He said manufacturers, transportation companies and ecommerce retailers need modern space and called it encouraging for the city and other northeastern Wisconsin communities to continue to gather and market land for industrial uses.
Contact Jeff Bollier at (920) 431-8387 or [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter at @JeffBollier.
