BY THE NUMBERS: ADVANCEPIERRE FOODS
1,000 full- and part-time employees in West Chester Twp. currently, at the headquarter offices and meat production plant
4,000 employees nationwide at 11 facilities in seven different locations
$1.5 billion in total revenues in 2012
100 executives to be moved from West Chester Twp. and Oklahoma to open new corporate offices in Blue Ash in May 2014
The Cincinnati-area’s largest privately-held company, AdvancePierre Foods Inc., confirmed Monday its headquarter offices are moving from Butler County’s West Chester Twp. to Blue Ash in neighboring Hamilton County.
Renovation plans were also announced for the soon-to-be vacated space in West Chester Twp. to open an administrative support center and expand research and development activities.
In Blue Ash, AdvancePierre is consolidating its senior leadership team from the site in West Chester Twp., as well as from sites in the Oklahoma City area. Plans are to open the corporate offices next month, a nearly $2 million investment.
“We’re bringing new employment into the region,” said Michael Sims, chief financial officer of AdvancePierre.
There will be more than 100 executive jobs at the new Blue Ash office when it opens, including more than 40 positions moving from Oklahoma to Greater Cincinnati, Sims said. Following acquisitions in 2010 and 2011 of companies in Oklahoma and Maine, top executives are spread across the country. Blue Ash headquarters will house leaders in one place.
“The real key driver for this business is to really build on the rich history of the four legacy companies that we have, but unite our leadership into a common area that will help us increase the pace of our innovation and deliver superior services to our customers,” Sims said.
“What was important for us in the site location was some degree of proximity to the existing West Chester location,” he said.
Meanwhile, AdvancePierre is also planning to open a shared services center at its existing West Chester Twp. facilities, Sims said. AdvancePierre is consolidating administrative service functions such as human resources, accounting, information technology, engineering, supply chain, and research and development at the Butler County site on Ohio 747.
The company — the largest manufacturer of sandwiches, full-cooked burgers, Philly steak, stuffed chicken breasts and country fried steak in the U.S. — will also build a new test kitchen for research in West Chester.
Renovations in West Chester Twp. will begin in earnest once the Blue Ash move is complete, he said.
“Between the protein production plant that exists there, as well as the shared services center, we will continue to have well over 900 people working” in West Chester, Sims said. “We will be investing a significant amount of funds to upgrade the (West Chester) facility as well.”
Blue Ash corporate offices will open in rented space at The Landings, an office building complex on Carver Road, said the city’s economic development director Neil Hensley.
“The company was looking to create a headquarters separate from the manufacturing facility,” Hensley said.
“They’ve grown to be the largest privately held company in Cincinnati. They were looking for something that would portray the image they wanted to the business world,” he said.
One of Cincinnati’s key industry clusters identified for growth is consumer products and brand development, a segment into which AdvancePierre fits as a food manufacturer, he said.
“They could just as easily have moved the Greater Cincinnati operations to Oklahoma instead of the reverse,” he said. “The fact that they chose to bring the Oklahoma operation to here shows this is a better place to grow that kind of company in the consumer goods cluster because you have such a strong talent pool in that industry to draw from.”
AdvancePierre is the largest privately company in the Cincinnati Tristate region by revenues of $1.5 billion in 2012. It currently operates headquarter offices and a meat production plant employing more than 1,000 full- and part-time workers combined at 9990 Princeton Glendale Road/Ohio 747. Approximately 4,000 workers are employed nationwide.
The food manufacturing company makes fully cooked beef, chicken and pork products and sandwiches that consumers buy at grocery stores, cafeterias and vending machines. AdvancePierre is also one of the largest suppliers of protein to school systems across the country.
A pair of acquisitions in 2010 more than doubled the company’s size. That year, Pierre merged with Advance Food Co. and Advance Brands of Oklahoma, growing to a company with 11 U.S. locations. In 2011, another acquisition was made of Barber Foods in Maine, a maker of stuffed chicken.
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