Trinity Frozen Foods, Charlotte, North Carolina, a new company that makes sweet potato fries, plans to invest more than $15 million over the next three years to bring its operations to Pembroke, North Carolina and create 149 jobs there.
The company has already begun to upgrade a vacant plant that had been used to make commercial buildings and homes. Trinity will turn it into a 150,000-square-foot sweet potato processing facility, said Jere Null, Trinity's president and chief executive officer.
Trinity has temporarily been processing North Carolina-grown sweet potato fries at a site in Canada. Its brands include Sweet Sensations and Frizzles, which are available for foodservice industries and at retail markets. Null said the Pembroke plant is scheduled to open July 1, and will initially employ 60 people.
Sweet potato fries sales have shown double-digit growth during the last five years, Null said. The companies plans to tap into that. The plant is expected to initially produce 12 million to 15 million pounds of sweet potato fries annually. It eventually will expand to produce 50 million pounds of fries a year. The nation produces about 2.5 billion pounds of sweet potatoes a year. About 40% of that amount is grown in North Carolina.
