Open Space (For Now)
InterChange Builds 108,000-Square-Foot Warehouse On Early Road
Posted: February 23, 2013
InterChange warehouse supervisor Jeremy Dean drives a forklift in the company’s 108,000-square-foot building on Early Road Tuesday morning. InterChange, which began as a box manufacturer in 1993, has seen substantial growth as a provider of third-party logistics to other businesses. (Photos by Nikki Fox / DN-R)
InterChange warehouse workers Jason Ritchie (left) and Jeremy Harper inventory a shipment to be stored in the company’s new 108,000-square-foot building off Early Road.
Terry Cunningham, sales representative for Interchange, finds keys to enter the company’s new 108,000-square-foot warehouse. It has 16 loading docks and six 18,000 square-foot bays inside.
Take International Delight creamer with your morning coffee? It’s been stored and maybe even repackaged at InterChange’s 78,000-square-foot refrigerated warehouse off Pleasant Valley Road, just outside of the Harrisonburg city limits.
InterChange’s contract with WhiteWave Foods, which makes International Delight and other dairy products at its Mount Crawford facility, is just one example of the third-party logistics services the company provides, in addition to its development and warehouse rental interests.
InterChange has grown substantially since its start as a box manufacturer in 1993, with the company investing $14.3 million in local warehouse facilities since 2004, according to figures provided by the company.
InterChange has about 100 employees and two campuses with several warehouses each in the Harrisonburg area, both located in the Pleasant Valley Road-Early Road industrial area along the city-county line.
It recently opened a $4.3 million, 108,000-square-foot warehouse located off Early Road near Interstate 81.
As it has done in the past, InterChange used the tilt-up construction technique in which concrete walls are poured onto the floor of the building and then tilted from horizontal to vertical with a crane.
The company plans to rent space at the facility to other companies, but could also run third-party logistics operations out of it.
In consumer protection legislation enacted in 2008, Congress defined a third-party logistics provider as a “person who solely receives, holds or otherwise transports a consumer product in the ordinary course of business but who does not take title to the product.”
Third-party logistics represents about half InterChange’s operations, said Terry Cunningham, sales representative for InterChange Group.
In addition to WhiteWave, the company also has contracts with poultry companies with local operations and language-learning software maker Rosetta Stone, for example, Cunningham said.
At one time, it stored 3 million pounds of raw peanuts for use at the Hershey’s chocolate plant in Stuarts Draft, he said.
InterChange Group is the only 3PL in the Harrisonburg area.
Cunningham said the company’s next expansion project involves developing a pad-ready site, which it will market to potential clients.
Thanks to the tilt-up building technique, he said, construction will be a breeze.
“Once we have a pad-ready site,” he said, “we can build a tilt-up building in about six months.”
Contact Jeremy Hunt at 574-6273 or jhunt@dnronline.com