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This week’s focus for Business Development Tuesday is Hearthside Food Solutions LLC in McComb, OH.  Some of the locals in the office may know it as the Consolidated Biscuit Factory a.k.a. the McComb cookie factory, but Hearthside Food Solutions purchased Consolidated Biscuit Factory back in 2009.

Hearthside Food Solutions is the industry’s largest food contract manufacturer, and the largest private bakery in the US.  Some of their production includes energy bars, snack bars, granola bars, baked bars, cookies, crackers, pretzels, croutons, breadcrumbs, snack components, and other baked foods and snacks.

They are also one of the largest food contract packaging companies in the US.  Today, Hearthside operates 24 production facilities, including three in Europe, and is a volume leader in multiple food categories.

While you will never see a Hearthside package of cookies in the local grocery store shelves, a lot of the snacks you purchase are produced and co-branded by Hearthside, very similar to what Cooper Farms does with their cooked meats.

Hearthside was originally scouted by OE back in 2011.  Last week, we hosted Hearthside at the NFWC with a tour and presentation.  The next day, Plant Manager, Chris Avery, sent a follow up email along with 12 months of utility bills back to us to initiate an Initial Evaluation.  An excerpt from Chris’ email, “Thank you for the tour yesterday, it is all my team has talked about today, probably the coolest tour we will take all year! “

Hearthside has multiple meters on site and uses an average of 25,000,000 kWh annually.  Initial screening shows the following:

•  FAA clear
• Land available to site
• AEP is their utility provider
• Minimum of a 3-turbine project
• Current kWh cost is approximately $0.071

Bottom line, this is a class example of a company that can truly benefit from a Wind for Industry project by helping them take control of their electricity costs.  Local management team is very excited about the project as well as the green initiative marketing that they can utilize.

Check out their website and learn more about Hearthside; there are some really cool videos to watch. http://www.hearthsidefoods.com.  Continue to track the whale board to see the progress of this potential project.

The Quarterly Report for Q1 2017 was completed and as part of our contractual responsibilities distributed to Prudential Capital earlier this week. This report is an excellent overview of OE’s activities for the first three months of the year.

The pdf of the report is available by clicking above.  It is a substantial document, consisting of 166 pages.

Due to the size of the document, a hard copy of the report is also available in the office. There are two binders that will be kept on the half round table in the center area for people to review.