One of the country’s largest tortilla manufacturers wants to build a $20 million plant that will produce corn flour in Gwinnett County.
The plant would create about 80 jobs and use green technology that produces no waste water.
Olé Mexican Foods has already been approved for a special use permit that allows the company to build an addition onto a now-vacant warehouse. The addition’s roof would be 99 feet off the ground, more than double the 40-foot limit of the county’s zoning codes, requiring the permit.
The 6,400-square-foot addition is planned for Crescent Drive, south of Jimmy Carter Boulevard and just outside of the Norcross city limits. Olé’s corporate headquarters is located about a block away from the site.
The company submitted its application for a commercial development permit Tuesday, which begins a review of their site plan, said Bryan Lackey, director of the county’s Department of Planning and Development. That will be the last step in the process before construction can begin, he said.
Eduardo Moreno, president of company, did not return phone messages left at the company’s headquarters Wednesday.
But in a letter to the Gwinnett County Department of Planning and Development, Moreno said the new plant will process 1.7 million bushels of food-grade corn every year. He added that machinery used in the process to make the product with “zero” waste water necessitates the high ceilings.
“Our company has invested a considerable amount of funds to research and develop a new and green technology to produce a corn flour and we are proud to mention that this new corn mill will have zero industrial waste water compared to the classical corn cooking process,” Moreno wrote in the letter. “Due to the nature of this new process, the production building requires a certain height of 99 feet.”
Details about state incentives being offered to the company were not available Wednesday.
A spokeswoman for the Georgia Department of Economic Development declined to comment Wednesday, as did Nick Masino, a senior vice president at the Gwinnett Chamber of Commerce.
Olé has distribution centers in eight other states and makes a variety of products under the brand names Olé, Verole, La Banderita and La Centroamericana.
Landing Olé’s investment in the Norcross area was competitive, said Gwinnett County Commissioner Lynette Howard, whose district includes that portion of the county.
“They could have built in a lot of different places,” Howard said. “Having this investment in manufacturing in Gwinnett County … is a huge deal. It just strengthens the tax base.”
The height restriction for the new building was approved under the conditions that there will be no illuminated signs on the new building and that all materials used will be subject to approval by Bryan Lackey, director of the county’s Department of Planning and Development.
Chuck Warbington, executive director of the Gwinnett Village Community Improvement District, said Olé was one of the first companies to join the CID when it formed in 2006. He said the new investment is important for the area.
“It’s an expansion; it’s new investment,” Warbington said. “That warehouse where they’ll be doing this additional work has been vacant for a while.”
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