A western New York ice cream company, Perry’s Ice Cream, is planning a $5 million expansion that will allow the company to handle more of its operations on site, reduce its costs and create about five new jobs.
Perry’s employs 285 people and expects to raise its total to 290. The company plans to build a 17,500- square-foot cold-storage facility at its Akron site. It would also turn a portion of an existing dry-storage area into a 40-degree storage cooler, and acquire machinery and equipment for manufacturing.
Perry’s hopes to start the project in October and finish it next March. The project will sharply reduce Perry’s need for off-site frozen and 40-degree storage space that it leases, cutting its costs related to labor, storage rental, product handling and transportation.
Denning said the company is striving to run its operations more efficiently in order to remain competitive. Perry’s was founded in 1918 and operated as a home-delivery dairy business until 1932, when it began to make ice cream. It annually produces more than 10 million gallons of ice cream and other frozen desserts, and has grown from an employment base of 88 people in 1981.