You’ve looked at the options. You own your site. Sure, the building is a little “mature,” but with some TLC and the help of your A&E/C firm, you can renovate the building, so it will meet food safety regulations, building codes, EPA and zoning laws—and even your municipality’s wastewater treatment requirements. Renovating your food or beverage plant can be done in stages, so as not to upset production. There’s even room to expand the building, and your design-build firm has done all the risk assessments, verifying that renovating and expanding are possible. Now, all that’s left, is what may be the toughest question: What will your business look like five, 10 or 20 years from now?
While the bulk of FSMA-based food and beverage processors have done their homework in preparing their plants, not only to meet FSMA regulations, but also GFSI certifications and customer requirements, some are still weighing many considerations to see if it makes sense to stay put and fix up or build at a new site altogether.