Pet food manufacturer Stella & Chewy’s LLC is transitioning into its new 164,000-square-foot facility in Oak Creek’s OakView Business Park.
“Our front office staff moved in about a week ago, and we have three new freeze driers in the manufacturing plant that have been installed and are up and running,” said Katie Wassil, director of communication and public relations. “We will continue to migrate pieces of our manufacturing processes (patty making, packaging, etc.) over the course of the summer.”
Currently, the only step in the manufacturing process that is operating from the new facility is freeze drying, Wassil said.
Once the transition is complete, Stella & Chewy’s plans to host a grand opening celebration in mid-July.
The new manufacturing facility, the company’s third in nine years, is located on an 18-acre parcel of land in the 220-acre OakView Business Park southwest of West Oakwood Road and South Howell Avenue. A groundbreaking was held for it last June.
The facility Stella & Chewy’s is transitioning out of is a 50,000-square-foot building at 2842 S. Fifth Court in Milwaukee. Prior to that, it was located in a 13,000-square-foot Muskego facility.
As the first tenants in the OakView Business Park, Stella & Chewy’s has the option to expand to 280,000 square feet of space in the future.
The new facility will support more than four times the company’s current overall production capacity.
Stella & Chewy’s, which is expecting more than $50 million in sales in 2015, is considered southeastern Wisconsin’s fastest-growing company. Last year, it topped the “Fastest Five” list compiled by the Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce’s Council of Small Business Executives.
For more information on the company, read the Oct. 27, 2014 cover story “Bow WOW! Stella & Chewy’s is on the fast track.”
