BOONVILLE, Ind. (AP) — A southern Indiana company that cooks hard-boiled eggs for restaurants, hospitals, universities and food manufacturers says its proposed $4 million expansion would allow it to become the world's top hard-boiled egg producer, turning out more than 1 million of the eggs a day.
Prime Foods Inc. of Boonville expects the expansion to start this fall and be completed by February. The expansion will add 20,000 square feet to the current 60,000-square-foot Boonville plant about 15 miles east of Evansville.
The company contracts with chicken farms in northern Indiana, Ohio and Georgia to get the eggs and uses huge boiling machines to cook them. Currently, the machines can cook and peel 40,000 boiled eggs each hour. After the expansion, the facility expects to process more than 100,000 eggs an hour, or 1.1 million eggs each day.
Company President Jay Kramer told the Evansville Courier & Press the expansion will make Prime Foods the largest single hard-cooked egg facility in the world.
Kramer said the shelf life of hard-boiled eggs, which are used in salads and other products, is about six weeks. He said the company has been growing as it picks up new contracts with clients.
"Our biggest growth was between 2008 and 2009 when we picked up a couple of big restaurant chains and big manufacturers," he said.
The expansion will bring the company three new egg cooking machines to add to the two in place now, and will add more refrigeration space.
Prime Foods — formerly known as Kramer & Son — distributes eggs to places as far away as Denver, Texas, Florida and Pennsylvania, Kramer said. The company says it is busiest during "salad season," which runs from April until September.
