Independent bottler Buffalo Rock Co. has opened a new 47-acre campus in Santa Rosa County, Fla., to serve the Gulf Coast region. The new facility is a 352,800 square feet and designed to support growing customer demand.
Located in the Northwest Florida Industrial Park, Buffalo Rock’s Santa Rosa Campus includes 312,800 square feet of distribution space and 40,000 square feet of office space, just off I-10 in East Milton.
Currently, 250 people work at the new facility. Buffalo Rock hopes to expand to 350-400 employees over the next few years. The facility represents a $90 million investment for the nation’s largest single family-owned Pepsi and Dr Pepper bottler. The campus includes an expanded warehouse and advanced automation technology designed to improve efficiency.
The facility allows the company to better serve its Gulf Region territories, according to Regional Vice President of Buffalo Rock’s Gulf Region Trent Davidson.
“It puts us in a place where we can better serve Mobile, Pensacola, Panama City and Dothan which are the four franchises that make up our gulf region,” Davidson said. “We’ve got machinery in it upwards of $8 million that puts us in a place that helps our day-to-day operations and the people that make that up from a picking standpoint and distributing standpoint to be able to do that quicker.”
“Out here in East Milton you’ve not had these types of job opportunities in the past and this is something that’s been a long time in the running so we’re very happy to see this happen,” said Kerry Smith, District Two County Commissioner.