Ahold Delhaize company purchases yet-to-be-launched food-processing plant at Quonset

NORTH KINGSTOWN – Infinity Fresh Kitchen, an Ahold Delhaize USA company, has purchased a food-processing facility at Quonset Business Park at 320 Commerce Park Road from Taylor Farms California Inc., the company announced Tuesday.

Infinity Fresh Kitchen is a subsidiary of Retail Business Services, Ahold Delhaize’s services company.

The company said it selected Taylor Farms to manage the facility’s operations and workforce. The plant is expected to employee 250 workers initially. Taylor Farms’ plans for the plant were announced in March. Taylor Farms had also planned to employ 250 workers at its facility. The project had yet to go live.

The facility is now expected to launch operations in September.

- Advertisement -

The Infinity Fresh Kitchen plant will process fresh food items for local grocery stores, including cut fruit and cut vegetables, leaf, grain and pasta salads, sandwiches, wraps and other items. The plant will initially provide goods to Hannaford and Stop & Shop.

“As the services company of Ahold Delhaize USA, the largest grocery retail group on the East Coast, Retail Business Services is charged with finding innovative solutions that enable the local grocery brands we support to focus on serving their customers,” said Roger Wheeler, president of Retail Business Services, in a statement. “Infinity Fresh Kitchen is the latest example of this innovation, which will help our retail partners bring the latest fresh, convenient items to their customers.”

The site will also include a culinary innovation center to test RBS private brand products, according to a company spokesperson.

“We’re pleased to work with Retail Business Services on this innovative facility,” said Bruce Taylor, CEO of Taylor Farms, in a statement. “We look forward to completing the outfitting of the facility and getting operations underway in the coming months.”

Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Ahold Delhaize has also been approved for Qualified Job incentives through its subsidiary, Infinity Meat Solutions LLC, which is also organized under Retail Business Services, the same parent organization of Infinity Fresh Kitchen.

Infinity Meat has proposed to build a $100 million, 200,000-square-foot processing operation to produce fresh packaged meat products at Quonset Business Park. The R.I. Commerce Corp. said the Infinity Meat project is projected to create at least 702 new full-time jobs in Rhode Island by 2022. The company is approved for up to $9.5 million in state incentives over a 10-year period for the project, including Qualified Job incentives and Rebuild Rhode Island incentives.

R.I. Commerce Corp. spokesman Matt Sheaff said the Infinity Fresh facility and jobs are in addition to the Infinity Meat Solutions jobs and are unrelated to the facility and jobs that qualified for Commerce RI incentives.

The Infinity Meat Solutions plant broke ground in the fall of 2018.

Chris Bergenheim is the PBN web editor. You may reach him at Bergenheim@PBN.com.