Food processor may build plant in Abq. instead of S.F.
High renovation costs cause Verde Foods owner to reconsider, despite potential for $18M in revenue bonds
Kelly Egolf, founder and proprietor of Verde Foods, who has planned to build a high-pressure food processing facility in Santa Fe, said Friday she may have to build the plant in Albuquerque instead.
Her company started out in 2014 as an organic juice business.
She had been planning to locate a new business, New Mexico Fresh Foods, in a warehouse in the 1500 block of Sixth Street and successfully convinced the City Council in August to pass a resolution that would be a first step in obtaining up to $18 million in industrial revenue bonds to help finance the project.
However, the cost of renovating the
building between Cerrillos Road and St. Michael’s Drive was far more than she originally anticipated.
“We’re looking for possible locations in both Santa Fe and Albuquerque,” Egolf told The New Mexican on Friday.
City councilors praised Egolf ’s business plans when passing the resolution in August.
“This is a very exciting project, not only for what it will do but how it’s being financed and the people who are involved and the impact it will have on the food industry as an economic development driver in the city of Santa Fe,” Councilor Carol Romero-Wirth said at the time.
Egolf said the new technology could revolutionize the state’s food economy.
An economic analysis said the business would create
162 new jobs in Santa Fe County and indirectly create an additional 640 jobs statewide in food production, agriculture and transportation.
The analysis said the city would receive approximately $21.1 million in net benefits over a 10-year period — if the facility was located here.
In issuing industrial revenue bonds, a local or state government essentially lends its name to a project but isn’t on the hook financially.
Such bonds essentially are tax subsidies, which can involve income tax exemptions on the interest paid to bondholders, allowing backers of such projects to borrow money at belowmarket rates and exemption from property taxes during the life of the bonds.
The financing mechanism, which has been used for such projects as the Facebook data processing center at Los Lunas, is intended to foster economic development.
The new technology — called HPP, or high-pressure processing — lengthens that shelf life of fresh food without using heat, preservatives or other chemicals, Egolf said.
“It can increase the shelf life of fresh food by 10 times,” she said.
In addition to vegetable-based food — such as salsa — the technology also can be used on meat products, such as bacon. “It gets rid of the bad bacteria but not the good probiotic bacteria,” she said.
While Verde Foods produces cold-pressed juice and nut milks and sells it at its location on West San Mateo Street and other local stores, Egolf said New Mexico Fresh Foods would process food for other companies and farmers selling their own brands.
Egolf is married to Rep. Brian Egolf, D-Santa Fe, who is speaker of the New Mexico House of Representatives.