Updated and completed with some photos from the event courtesy of Arnold Hendrix, the city’s public information officer.
Sky Valley Foods will be relocating their operations to Danville from Yanceyville, NC. They will also be expanding their production.
Sky Valley Foods makes high quality organic sauces including pasta sauce and salad dressings. They will relocate to the old Shorewood Packaging plant in the Airside Industrial Park.
The company plans on adding 60 new full-time positions at the new location.
Here’s the official press release from the city…
Sky Valley Foods, a North Carolina-based maker of natural and organic sauces and salad dressings, announced today that it is relocating to Airside Industrial Park in Danville, where the company expects to expand its business and add new product lines.
The new location at 145 Cane Creek Blvd., formerly occupied by Amcor Tobacco Packaging and Shorewood Packaging Corp., will provide added space for expansion.
“This project brings a wonderful addition of new jobs to our region,” Mayor Sherman Saunders said. “We have a major food processing company just down the street, and now a second food processor joins Nestle in Airside Industrial Park. Sky Valley Foods will be a significant contributor to our local economy, and I welcome them with a hungry appetite.”
The company produces salad dressings and specialty sauces, including condiments, marinades, salsa and pasta sauce, for the natural and organic food consumer. Its branded products are Bella’s, Organicville, Sky Valley and Simply Delicious.
Sky Valley Foods formed in early 2011 with the merger of Wizard’s Cauldron of Yanceyville, N.C., and Organicville Foods of Milwaukee. Prior to the merger, the two companies shared a history that spanned more than 25 years as organic and natural food producers.
Production at the 132,000 square-foot facility in Airside Industrial Park will begin by late fall. The company will employ 60 workers when production here begins. It intends to have 100 workers on its payroll by the end of 2015.
The relocation not only will bring jobs to Danville, but it will put into use a facility that has been idle since Amcor closed in April of 2013. The Industrial Development Authority of Danville purchased the site and entered into a lease-purchase agreement with Sky Valley Foods. The project does not use incentive funds from state agencies, but the City of Danville is providing $100,000 to defray the cost of installing floor drains throughout the building to provide sanitary conditions required for food processing.
Will these be “living” wage additions??? I welcome new jobs to the area but please let them pay people enough to live on, please give them enough hours to work!
People usually get paid the value of their work to the employer. If they don’t, they’re free to find other employment that pays them the wages that they desire.
However, that’s not the point of this article.
People rarely get paid the value of the work to the employer. They get paid the minimum that the employer can get by with paying. That’s why there is a minimum wage. It also reflects that the relationship between an employer and an employee is not a level playing field.
How do you go about applying for these jobs? Thanks in advance
No word on that yet, but I’ll update as soon as I find out. My first guess is that they’ll use the VA Workforce Center, but just logical thinking there.
Few people know that Adam Tomer had a hand in the original Wizard’s Cauldron when it was a startup operation on Highway 86 before it moved to Yanceyville.
Adam did not put his hand in the cauldron, however.
Cali, If you want to apply, go to http://skyvalleyfoods.com/
As someone pointed out in the comments on the GoDanRiver website, this is not 60 new jobs. There are already 50 folks working for them now, so they will only add 10 more, and lets hope 40 more by 2015 to get to 100 will pan out.
“Living wage” again… Could you quantify what you mean by living wage?
If you want to work for them you have to go through Ameristaff in Danville.
People are rarely paid what they are worth. They are usually paid what the employer thinks it will cost to replace the worker and still make a profit. Different fields have different wages. When we talk of raising the minimum wage it can have unintended consequences and actually cost jobs in some areas. I would be curious to know defines a “Living Wage.”
The loss of jobs is unlikely in an economy like ours. The bigger risk of an unintended consequence in this day and age is salary compression. If we adopted a $9/hr minimum wage, the people who make $8.50/hr now might just go find a new minimum wage job or might just be immensely dissatisfied that they are getting the same $9/hr now that newly hired people are getting.
I want to put a application in can I do it online or do I have to come to the danville office. And my second a question is are you still excepting applications?
You’ll need to contact the company for that.