CINCINNATI — Skally’s Old World Bakery, a family-owned bagel and pita bread bakery, has unveiled plans to establish production operations in West Harrison, Ind. The company said it will invest $40 million to build a 350,000-square-foot production facility that will house a bread production line serving customers in 40 states across the United States. The building will complement the company’s existing two-story 42,000-square-foot facility in Cincinnati.
The company, which currently employs 96, plans to begin construction in March 2016. The bakery anticipates hiring for production line, quality assurance and I.T. positions in 2017.
“The Skally family is excited at the opportunity to take our family business to Dearborn County, expanding operations and creating new jobs in West Harrison, Ind.,” said Ephraim Skally, founder and chief executive officer of Skally’s Old World Bakery.
The Skally family founded Old World Bakery in 1977 in a 17-foot-wide, 1,275-square-foot bakery in Cincinnati. The bakery originally focused on pita bread and added a bagel line in 1981. The bakery has grown exponentially, now baking and packaging 24,000 bagels and 10,000 loaves of pita every hour to ship to customers across the United States.
“I’m excited to welcome Skally’s Old World Bakery to the Hoosier State,” said Mike Pence, governor of Indiana. “Like this family-owned business, Indiana was built on shared values of tradition, quality and hard work, and it’s our strong Hoosier workforce that helps Indiana stand out as the ideal place to do business.”
The Indiana Economic Development Corp. offered Skally’s Old World Bakery up to $900,000 in conditional tax credits based on the company’s job creation plans. The incentives are performance-based, meaning until residents of Indiana are hired, the company is not eligible to claim incentives. The county will offer additional incentives at the request of Dearborn County Redevelopment Commission.
“Based on its location, ease of build, and infrastructure assets, the site for the Skally’s project is one of the most premier manufacturing sites in the unincorporated portion of our county,” said Shane McHenry, president of the Dearborn County Board of Commissioners. “We value long-term commitments and were looking for a community-minded employer. It was an added bonus that they, similar to our recent Whitewater Mill project, are a business of several generations with a long tradition of quality. Just great people who want to be great neighbors and mirror our values as a community.”
