BROWNSVILLE, Texas - Breaded shrimp, buttered mozzarella sticks and fry pickles - all by the tons.
Robotics. Forklift operators, some dressed in strange looking outfits, and an army of people wearing white workers cloth and hairs nets.
All of that and more makes Rich’s, a Brownsville plant that processes a variety of frozen food for customers from all over the country.
One of the latest additions here was the acquisition of a team of robotics arms, or palletizers, used to pick boxes from a single product to place them onto pallets.
The handful of robots can handle the work of many workers.
Some 600 employees work at the plant that has been in Brownsville since 1993. They earn wages from $14 to more than $30 an hour, depending on the type of work they do.
On one section of the plant are scores of people making the bread sticks that starts from cutting the loaves into slices and then into sticks with a machine made for that line of work.
The cheese comes in blocks that are shredded and used for coating.
Once the sticks are completed, they go into plastic bags and into boxes for shipping.
On another sector, are tons of shrimp for the processing of breaded and popcorn shrimp sold in many supermarkets, while other products go to chain restaurants.
Some food items are familiar to the local consumers as they are seen in the frozen food sections of the shopping places they go to like Walmart and Sam’s Club.
Gerardo Martinez, a manager, said the Brownsville plant is the only one of nearly 30 the company has that processes shrimp.
He said half of this seafood item is wild-caught and the other half comes from South America.
Rich’s was previously known here as Rich SeaPak.
In 2023, the company announced it was investing $120 million to expand its operations and it now has a 350,000-square-foot food processing facility in Brownsville.
The parent company, headquartered in Buffalo, N.Y., was founded in 1954 by Robert “Bob” E. Rich, Sr.
The tour provided an opportunity to see first-hand how a plant operates and which is now part of the city’s growing industrial community.
