Smyrna Park
Tuesday, November 30th, 2010Today, Franke Foodservice Systems (FFS) in La Vergne announces that it will build a new $25 million headquarters and warehouse in the Smyrna Industrial Park by the summer of this year. FFS is Swiss that makes and distributes industrial kitchen equipment, public restroom equipment and industrial krups coffee machines. FFS is also is one of four divisions of The Franke Group.
The move signals growth not only for Franke USA, but for the Smyrna Industrial Park, an area exploding with commercial and industrial development.Claudia Synnatzschke, Franke USA’s special projects manager, says the company is bursting at the seams. It has about 160 employees working in two leased buildings on Tech Park Drive near Interstate 24.
Synnatzschke says the work force will expand by the time the company moves to its new home in two years. The headquarters, now in the design stages, will be a 250,000-square-foot plant on Aviation Parkway off North Lowry.
Synnatzschke says Franke picked the industrial park primarily because of its location. The majority of the company’s work force lives in Smyrna, La Vergne and Murfreesboro.
The company set up operations in Rutherford County in 1995.
The 400-acre Smyrna Industrial Park, which connects the Smyrna Airport, has an aggressive approach to recruiting businesses with the availability of space, proximity to the airport and the nearby amenities such as restaurants and retail shops for workers.
Black says a company can get into the market for 20 percent less than Davidson County, where land for warehouses and industrial facilities is scarce.
Wearwell, a maker of floor mats that has been operating in Nashville for 57 years, recently moved to a new $5.8 million facility in the industrial park.
The company, chose to pull up roots because it couldn’t find a big enough space in Davidson County.
The manufacturing arm of Franke Foodservice Systems is in Fayettville, Tenn. The La Vergne headquarters houses a research and development division and a shipping warehouse.
The Franke Group had sales of $2.4 billion Swiss francs ($1.9 billion American) in 2006.