Food distributor plans to add 10 employees with $18 million investment

A Columbus food distribution facility is planning an $18 million dollar investment at its location in the Woodside Industrial park on the south side of the city.

Owners of Ninth Avenue Foods off of County Road 175W say that they are planning two new processing and packaging lines at their facility, which is their central U.S. headquarters. The expansion will add 10 new jobs to the facility over the next few years. That will bring the plant’s total employment up to 111 employees with an average wage of $27.58 an hour.

According to the company, its $103 million dollar dairy and plant-based beverage facility is the first outside of its home state of California. There are 85 people already working at plant.

In documents filed with the city, company officials said that the expansion would be added in open space already in the existing 220,000 square foot facility. The new equipment will include a state of the art beverage manufacturing line specializing in milk and dairy alternative beverages. The packaging line would be for those same products.

Heritage Distributing Co. was scheduled to ask Columbus City Council for a tax abatement on the new investment Tuesday night.