A plant-based meat producer runs its manufacturing and import operations from a site on Saginaw Drive in Redwood City, and in 2021 the company added a second building nearby, a 164,000-square-foot space at Pacific Shores Center, to keep up with demand. Alt-protein production at that scale needs packaging automation sized for high volumes: forming and sealing pouches and film-wrapped portions fast enough to match a growing line, then packing finished cases at the same pace. It sits inside a Redwood City economy otherwise dominated by software and biotech firms, standing out as one of the only food-manufacturing operations of real scale left in the city.

Food manufacturing in Redwood City isn't new, even if it looks different today. The Port of Redwood City has operated as a federally approved shipping channel since 1882, and the produce-canning plants that once lined the waterfront were significant enough that a 1923 trade advertisement named a local cannery one of four model canneries in the country. The cannery days are gone. A single plant-based meat manufacturer now covers two buildings where a waterfront of canneries once stood. PLAN IT's Mars Series VFFS baggers form and seal pouches and film-wrapped portions of plant-based protein product at the volumes a Saginaw Drive-scale plant runs, and automatic case packers load the finished cases for the trip out. If your line is scaling the way that Pacific Shores Center expansion did, we keep this equipment in stock and ready to install. PLAN IT's California locations page lists other accounts up and down the Peninsula, while the food and beverage industry page breaks down the equipment categories a plant-based protein operation like this one draws from. The case study on scaling food-production packaging, the VFFS and case packer categories, and the full solutions page speak more directly to what a plant-based protein operation this size typically needs next.