With the greenhouse officially opening and the vegetables nearly ready for harvest, it’s a busy time here at Red Sun Farms and greenhouse in Wapakoneta. In May of 2016, the green light was given for a green house to be built in Wapakoneta by Red Sun and Golden Fresh Farms. The president of Red Sun Farms says that they are excited to break ground in Ohio.
"It accesses plenty of our retail clients present and hopefully, more in the future; Ohio has been very receptive in the development of this project," said Jim DiMenna, president of Red Sun Farms.
It’s been 10 months since the first plans were made and over 200,000 seedlings have been planted across 20 acres. With the new greenhouse and packing plant brings more agricultural jobs to Ohio, which is something that the state is happy about.
"Agriculture right now, before this investment, was $105 billion worth of economic activity, one out of every seven jobs, and with something like this, hopefully that will raise that up a little bit," said David Daniels, director of the Ohio Department of Agriculture.
But what’s open in the facility is only phase one of the project: "We will plan to continue to build more projects in Ohio into this specific facility, and we're excited about this being Phase 1 and we're looking forward to Phases 2, 3, and 4," DiMenna said. "The cost of a project like this is really high, so we need to generate some revenue, it might be a year, it might be two, but we'll definitely be working sooner than later."
A representative of Red Sun Farms says that the packing of tomatoes should begin within the next few weeks.
