Ontario Premier Doug Ford and politicians from around the region were in Pickering Monday to mark the beginning of a significant commercial development. The massive property will be home to a well-known food manufacturer — and is said to be bringing in a lot of dough and jobs.
The new group of facilities is going to be called the Wonderbrands Innovation Business Park and will be home to what is being called a “food manufacturing campus.” It’s owned by FGF Brands, the company behind Wonderbread, ACE Baking, Dataliano and other baked goods.
It’s a sign of good things rising for Pickering Mayor Kevin Ashe.
“This is an amazing opportunity,” he said of the “1.2 million square feet of technology company that bakes.
“It’s really exciting about this addition to the innovation corridor.”
This massive plot of land is going to be a brand-new home for the company, building three plants and other facilities. The people behind it are brothers and co-founders Tejus and Ojus Ajmera.
“The support that we’re getting, the housing that’s being built here, the amount of talent that is coming in,” Ojus Ajmera says. “We think we can build a lot of facilities over the next 10 years.”
The development will be the first of its kind in the region. The owners hope to build for other companies as well, to add to the ‘food manufacturing campus’.
“We’re going to start building infrastructure for suppliers alike and education for the schools locally,” Ojus says.
This won’t be just any bread factory — it has the potential to bring change to the developing area.
The company has become a global leader in its craft. It is known for pioneering a new form of manufacturing in the food industry, replacing low-tech with robotics and artificial intelligence systems.
The Ajmera brothers say it’s all to help improve their production every day as the machines learn.
“We utilize a lot of vision technology to really be able to monitor, inspect, and create data from that vision learning technology,” says Tejus.
The technology inside the facilities is the perfect mix for students at Durham College as well. The school has an AI hub, meant to help students improve their knowledge of the technology. Peter Garrett, manager of government relations with the college, says the company will help students build key skills they need for a promising career in AI technology.
“When you have companies like this building a centre that focuses so heavily on tech and manufacturing, it’s just great for our campus and the students to have that opportunity,” he says.
The new build adds to an already booming area — with Kubota manufacturing building a massive storage facility there, and Bad Boy Furniture also located its headquarters in the region.
Ashe says this investment alone is going to bake up thousands of jobs.
“First phase a thousand jobs. Full build-out, more than 4,000 jobs, rivalling (OPG) Ontario Power Generation for our largest employer,” he says. “This is going to be huge for Pickering.”