New Company RailEx Plans Produce Packing and Distribution Facility on Port of Walla Walla Property in Washington State

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Researched by Industrialinfo.com (Industrial Information Resources, Incorporated; Houston, Texas). A newly formed privately-held company named RailEx, LCC, a division of Ampco Distribution Services, LLC (Riverhead, New York), is planning to construct a state-of-the-art produce packing and distribution facility on the Port of Walla Walla’s property in Burbank, Washington. Plans are coming together to construct a 200,000 square-foot packing and distribution building along with a "loop track" rail project around the port property to support a 55-car refrigerated boxcar train to transport Washington produce to its final destination in Albany, New York, where an unloading center will be built.

The company selected Fisher & Son (Burlington, Washington) as the design-build firm for the $10 million project and the final building permit is expected to be in-hand within the next 30 days. Construction is scheduled to kick off November 1, 2005, and RailEx expects the facility to be fully operational by March of 2006.

The distribution facility will ship apples, onions, potatoes and other Washington grown produce to Albany in 124 hours of travel time. Non-stop travel will deliver produce from coast to coast in about half the time as a typical rail and provides an alternate method of shipping perishable produce other than over-the-road truck transport.

The Port has also received state loan and grant money to make infrastructure improvements, such as access roads and drainage improvements to aid the project in moving forward.

Ampco Distribution Services, LLC is the largest fresh potato distributor headquartered on the east coast. They ship potatoes year-round from all production areas, including Maine, Long Island, Idaho, Wisconsin, Colorado, and Florida. The company also stores and ships a full line of vegetables and fruit year round, as well as a large array of offshore imports. They have facilities in Riverhead, New York, Youngwood, Pennsylvania, Salinas, California, Doraville, Georgia, Salisbury, North Carolina, and Pompano Beach, Florida. They have sales departments in all these facilities, as well as fifteen transportation managers handling freight.

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