Smucker opens its McCalla Uncrustables facility

The opening

J.M. Smucker celebrated the opening of its McCalla, Alabama, Uncrustables facility on 7 November 2024. The 900,000-square-foot site joins dedicated plants in Scottsville, Kentucky, and Longmont, Colorado. Chief executive Mark Smucker said the brand generated approximately $800 million in annual net sales in the previous fiscal year. He retained a $1 billion annual-sales goal for fiscal 2026.

Third dedicated manufacturing location.
Fiscal 2026 sales figure: a target.

The original phased investment

The project was announced on 18 November 2021 as a $1.1 billion manufacturing facility and distribution centre. Smucker expected construction to begin by January 2022 and production to start in calendar 2025. Construction and production were to unfold in three phases over several years, creating up to 750 jobs. Investment and employment would follow those phases, conditional on tax and business incentives and completion of the land purchase. At that earlier stage, the company reported approximately $500 million in annual brand sales and double-digit annual growth during the preceding decade.

Capacity and process development

On 27 February 2023, Smucker described the pressure from demand that it said exceeded available supply. Its Longmont factory, launched in 2019, had recently completed a second-phase expansion adding 240,000 square feet of production space. The company also outlined a Pilot Research Lab on its Orrville campus, scheduled to start in spring 2023. Its consumer research and development team would test product ideas and evaluate processes intended to improve factory efficiency and productivity without disrupting existing production. McCalla’s staged construction remained part of this capacity-development programme.

The financial context before opening

Results published on 28 August 2024 covered the first quarter of fiscal 2025, ending 31 July 2024. The broader U.S. Retail Frozen Handheld and Spreads segment reported $496.8 million in net sales and $119 million in segment profit. Reported sales grew 7%; excluding prior-year sales from the divested Sahale Snacks business, growth was 9%. Smucker attributed improved segment profit to lower costs, favourable volume and product mix, and higher pricing, partly offset by marketing investment and pre-production expenses for the new sandwich factory. These were segment results, rather than Uncrustables-only sales.