A cold storage company plans to build a 150,000-square-foot facility in Gainesville that will create roughly 100 jobs, according to an announcement from Gov. Brian Kemp’s office.
Agile Cold Storage said the proposed site for the Gainesville facility is at 3117 Athens Highway, just east of Roy Parker Road and about a fifth of a mile from Eskimo Cold Storage, another cold storage facility.
The jobs needed at Agile’s Gainesville facility will include warehouse management, administration, clerical, forklift operators, maintenance and other warehouse jobs, according to Kemp’s announcement.
The company is planning another 150,000-square-foot facility in Cartersville that will create roughly 70 jobs.
“As a Georgia-based company, we are very excited to make these investments and to be able to create these jobs in our home state. When we looked around the Southeast for the ideal location for these two facilities, Georgia really stood out. Georgia is home to a wide variety of food manufacturers, tremendous temperature-controlled logistics partners, and a world-class port in Savannah,” Agile President and CEO Don Schoenl said in the governor’s news release.
Kemp said the investment by Agile Cold Storage “is a testament to Georgia’s dominance in the poultry industry and our top-notch logistics network.”
Georgia Poultry Federation President Mike Giles said the poultry industry in this region produces items that are delivered to more than 100 countries around the world and across the United States. He said the cold storage infrastructure plays a critical role in getting these products to consumers.
“I think this investment is an indication of the importance of poultry in our region and the potential for future growth going forward,” Giles said.
The state’s poultry industry produces more than 31 million pounds of chicken and 7 million eggs daily.
“Agile Cold Storage will be a welcome part of the Gainesville-Hall County business community,” said Kit Dunlap, president and CEO of the Greater Hall Chamber of Commerce in a statement. “Gainesville-Hall County has many food and pharmaceutical manufacturers that rely on cold-chain logistics, like Agile Cold Storage, to distribute their products to U.S. consumers and to export markets through the Port of Savannah.”
Dunlap told The Times Thursday, Oct. 1, said the new facility coming to Gainesville “speaks to the strength of the poultry industry here.”
“I think the future is very strong for the poultry industry and the other manufacturers in our area,” Dunlap said. “You see that in the existing industry expansion. We have a lot of local companies that are expanding as we speak.”