After being purchased by the Hershey Company last December, Brookside Foods now has major projects under way in Saint-Hyacinthe.

Reproduced by kind permission of Brookside Foods

The addition of two new production lines will allow for the creation of some 50 new jobs over the next 18 months.

The capacity of the chocolate candy plant will grow from 48 tonnes per day to approximately 65. The plan is not to create new kinds of sweets but to increase the production capacity for existing products. These little treats will be exported mainly to the United States and China.

One of the new production lines will be built following a 13,000-square-foot expansion of the plant. Commissioning is planned for early December. The other - the sixth one in the building - will be set up in the warehouse, since products will now be distributed from Hershey's distribution centre. This new line should come on stream next year. The company refuses to reveal the total cost of this work. Over the past few years, Brookside Foods had made several investments to increase its plant's production capacity, amounting to about $5 million in four years. During the same period, the workforce increased from 40 to 150 employees.

One investment leads to another

The growth in Brookside Foods' production has also led its chocolate supplier, Barry Callebaut, to invest in additional liquid chocolate storage equipment in its Saint-Hyacinthe plant. In 2010, this plant, which employs about 500 people, announced investments of more than $20.6 million to increase its production capacity to almost 500 tonnes per day. This plant is the largest one of global giant Barry Callebaut in the Americas and the second largest in the world. More than 90% of its output is exported to locations outside Québec.

Source © 2012 Nathalie Côté, Special collaboration, La Presse inc., a subsidiary of Gesca. All rights reserved. ”