East Central Indiana: Feeding the Nation

Justin Sicking

Food processing in East Central Indiana is big business. With producers manufacturing everything from top-quality lunch meats to delectable baked goods and distributing their products to retailers across the country, you’re sure to have tasted some of the food coming out of the region.

And with a cutting-edge “precision fermentation” plant under construction, the region is poised to be a hot spot in the industry for years to come. 

It’s Nice to Meat You 

Lifelong Indiana resident and proud Hoosier Adam Lingle was born in Southern Indiana and has lived in New Castle for over two decades. When Boar’s Head, which manufactures premium deli meats, cheeses and spreads like hummus, launched operations in the city in 2015, Lingle was the first plant manager of the 150,000-square-foot facility.

Over the past nine years, the operation has more than doubled in size, expanding by over 170,000 square feet with the addition of a second manufacturing facility and distribution center. Now, Lingle oversees all production as the director of manufacturing. 

“When we made the decision to open and later expand our New Castle manufacturing facility, an exhaustive site selection was conducted,” Lingle says. “The state of Indiana and Henry County proved to be an ideal choice. The area offered a central location, synergistic business climate and experienced workforce.” 

The New Castle facility distributes its products to grocery stores, specialty markets and eateries across the globe, he says, but Lingle is hard-pressed to name his favorite offering coming off the line. 

“As a foodie, I love all the Boar’s Head products,” he says. “There are simply too many delicious options to choose one.” 

The Right Place to Make Modern Meals 

Cutting-edge food manufacturer Liberation Labs is also building a presence in the region with the construction of its $150 million production facility in Richmond. Groundbreaking occurred in June 2023, says Mark Warner, the co-founder and CEO of the biotech venture, and he expects the facility to open in late 2024. 

“I’m a chemical engineer by background,” Warner says. Over his career, he’s “worked for hundreds of companies in the novel protein space.” Think Impossible Foods – home of the Impossible Burger, a plant-based meat alternative created by the fermentation of genetically modified yeast, and one of the companies for whom Warner was a consultant. 

Warner founded Liberation Labs in 2022 to address the pain points he saw as a result of using outdated buildings to produce what he calls “novel proteins.” 

“My expertise is designing and building facilities,” Warner says, as he explains many biotech operations are housed in former pharmaceutical manufacturing plants. “Those facilities are much smaller and are not designed for processes biotech companies have been developing. [It’s like] novel software trying to run on a 10-year-old computer.” 

When selecting Richmond as the home of Liberation, he says an important consideration was the livability of the region. 

“Richmond checked all the boxes. It [is home to] 35,000 people, which is a good-size city,” he says. “[Richmond is] within 1.5 hours of Cincinnati, Indianapolis and Columbus. … Richmond is the best site I’ve found in 35 years.” 

Essentially, the site needed sugar, power and people – and East Central Indiana has them all in spades. Warner hopes to hire approximately 45 highly paid employees for initial operations at the lab, but says that with expansion, Liberation could employ as many as 150. And with biotechnology constantly improving, there’s no telling where the limit is. 

Get That Bread in East Central Indiana

Paul Dash grew up in Washington and moved to Indiana in 2016 for a job with Café Valley, which has been manufacturing baked goods for over a quarter-century. 

“In 2009, we built our first 300,000 square-foot bakery in Phoenix, Arizona, and in 2014, built [another] 300,000 square feet in Marion.” 

Cakes, croissants, muffins and cupcakes roll off four high-speed manufacturing lines manned by 700 employees and end up on store shelves in all 50 states.

“In almost every in-store bakery in the country, you can find products made by Café Valley,” Dash says. The products are branded as both Café Valley and as store goods. 

Two big clients – Walmart and Kroger – are household names. His favorite snack? The vanilla cupcakes topped with patriotic red, white and blue frosting.