A Louisiana company specializing in a wide variety of pepper products has announced plans to set up operations in southern New Mexico.
Based in New Orleans, the Louisiana Pepper Exchange has emerged as a big player in the pepper puree, pepper mash, and pepper powder market both nationally and internationally.
Launched in 2010, the company has “grown in step with the gourmet hot sauce business, and also the move for spicy food and chili pepper flavor to the culinary mainstream,” noted a recent article in the Times-Picayune of New Orleans, charting the company’s rapid ascent.
With a distribution center in New Orleans, the company now wants to launch a plant on some 14 acres inside the Ironhorse Industrial Park in Santa Teresa.
Plans call for the company, whose supplies are grown on farms in Central and South America as well as Mexico, to set up a 40,000 square foot processing warehouse capable or storing up to 30 million pounds of pepper mash.
In a statement, Zach Foster, Louisiana Pepper Exchange chief financial officer, called Santa Teresa “the perfect location for Louisiana Pepper to thrive.”
Continued Foster: “The Mesilla Valley has a long history and heritage with chili peppers; New Orleans has the same culture, so this is a natural fit.”
The project has received $300,000 in Local Economic Development Act funding via the New Mexico Economic Development Department.
By Garry Boulard
