Twin City Foods is expanding its Pasco plant.

The Stanwood-based food processing corporation has broken ground for a single story, 32,000-square-foot addition to the existing vegetable processing plant at 5405 Industrial Way in Pasco.

"This will basically be storage, not processing," said Mick Lovgreen, chief of operations for the corporation.

Building plans filed with the city of Pasco describe the addition as a general warehouse for storage of packing materials, parts storage and a maintenance shop.

"We've been storing some of this outside. The addition will give us more inside storage and allow us to move some things out of the food processing area," Lovgreen said.

The addition is valued at $1.7 million. Lovgreen expects it to be completed in mid-June.

Twin City Foods has four processing plants in Washington and Michigan. The company grows, processes and freezes five major vegetables: green peas, sweet corn, carrots, green beans and baby lima beans.

The additional warehouse space was designed by LSB Consulting Engineers of Spokane. The general contractor for the project is Purterbaugh Construction of Grandview.

Twin City Foods also has a processing plant in Kennewick, but Lovgreen said the company has no plans to expand it.