JACQUELINE ALEXANDER, owner of The Puff Factory, chats with colleagues while construction on the building hums along. The freeze-dried fruit plant, expected to open in early 2017, will transform single-origin fruit into packaged snacks called “puffs.”
JACQUELINE ALEXANDER, owner of The Puff Factory, chats with colleagues while construction on the building hums along. The freeze-dried fruit plant, expected to open in early 2017, will transform single-origin fruit into packaged snacks called “puffs.”
The pieces of The Puff Factory are coming together.
Construction crews were busy Thursday morning assembling wall and roof paneling on the 26,000-square-foot structure in Odell as company representatives gathered to watch.
The freeze-dried fruit plant, located at 3030 Lower Mill Drive, is slated to open in March 2017. The two-story building’s exterior will likely be finished by the end of November.
“It will start looking like a real building soon,” said Mike Strachan with Portland-based PacificMark Construction, the project’s general contractor.
Crews broke ground on the property in May. The main task at hand: piecing together the hulking structure’s roof.
The plant’s bottom story will house the main processing floor — cold storage, conveyer belts, industrial-scale fruit dryer and all. An elevator will lead to a second level with office space.
Puff Factory sits next to the U.S. Post Office, and west of Cardinal Glass. The factory will neighbor the Lower Mill Business Park under development by the Port of Hood River.
Once complete, Puff Factory will transform fruit from the Hood River Valley and greater Northwest into healthy snacks via a patent-pending technique, developed in partnership with the Oregon State University Food Innovation Center in Portland.
The finished “puffs” will be sold around the nation under a new brand, Know Your Fruit.
The puffs come from one source: whole fruit. Apples, pears, cherries, strawberries and marionberries make up the roster so far. The fruit gets flash frozen, crisped and packed for delivery. Puffs will be free of any sweeteners or additives. Unlike fruit snacks, they’ll resemble the fruit’s original form and hold onto their nutritional value.
Owner Jacqueline Alexander, who also owns nearby Morale Orchards, said the plant will be able to handle about 2,500 pounds of fruit per day, or 10-15,000 packages of puffs.
Each batch will take an extensive freeze-drying process.
“It’s a long, slow process … but that’s kind of the trick,” explained Gary Rains, Puff Factory local representative.
While the larger fruit, like apples and pears, will be sliced into bite-sized pieces, the berries will be whole — they’ll retain their full shape when transfigured to puffs, Rains said.
Alexander, who grew up in Orange County, Calif., bought the Odell orchard in 2006. Her orchard sourced the Asian pears that would become prototypes for Know Your Fruit’s novel puffs.
The Puff Factory project was financed in part with a $5.3 million loan from Rural Community Assistance Corporation, along with new market tax credits destined for economic development in rural areas.
The facility will employ 30-40 full-time employees with various levels of skill, from food sorting and processing labor to management and marketing personnel.
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