IN Brief:
- Ferrara plans to invest $675m in its first South Carolina operation.
- The 750,000 sq ft Orangeburg facility will include processing, packaging, warehousing, and office space.
- First production lines are expected to become operational in the first quarter of 2029.
Ferrara Candy Company will invest $675m in a new confectionery manufacturing operation in Orangeburg County, South Carolina, expanding production capacity across its sugar confectionery portfolio.
The project will create Ferrara’s first operation in South Carolina. The company plans to construct a 750,000 sq ft facility at Highway 21 and Rowesville Road in Orangeburg, with the site set to include processing and packaging operations, a warehouse for raw and pack materials, and administrative offices.
Ferrara expects the investment to create 1,000 manufacturing and corporate jobs over the next 10 years. The first production lines are scheduled to become operational in the first quarter of 2029, giving the company a long runway for site build-out, recruitment, equipment installation, commissioning, and supply-chain integration.
Marco Capurso, chief executive officer of Ferrara, said: “Our new Orangeburg facility represents a major step forward in transforming Ferrara’s manufacturing scale and capability, positioning the company for long-term global leadership.”
Ferrara is headquartered in Chicago and has operated for 118 years. It runs more than 30 facilities worldwide, employs more than 9,400 people, and sells products in more than 60 countries. Its portfolio includes NERDS, SweeTARTS, Laffy Taffy, Trolli, Brach’s, Jelly Belly in the US, Terry’s and Carambar in Europe, and Dori in Brazil.
The South Carolina investment includes both processing and packaging capacity. Confectionery growth is rarely just a question of cooking, forming, or depositing capacity. It also depends on wrapping, bagging, secondary packaging, case packing, warehousing, and the ability to manage large quantities of raw materials and pack components. By combining production, packaging, warehouse, and office functions at the same site, Ferrara is building a facility around scale rather than incremental line addition.
Major food manufacturers continue to use capital expenditure to defend future category positions despite consumer caution. Higher costs and more selective household spending have put pressure on many branded food categories, but confectionery remains shaped by innovation, seasonal demand, portion formats, and strong brand recognition. Companies with fast-growing products need manufacturing networks that can handle spikes, promotional volumes, and packaging variation without creating bottlenecks.
Ferrara has also grown through acquisition. Ferrero’s 2018 purchase of Nestlé’s US confectionery business added brands including SweeTARTS and Laffy Taffy, while Ferrara acquired Jelly Belly in 2023. Those deals created a larger brand portfolio, and production capacity now has to support that wider commercial footprint.
The Orangeburg project points to the next phase of that expansion. It is a capacity platform for a larger confectionery group competing in a category where shelf presence, launch speed, and packaging execution are central to performance. The long lead time to first production in 2029 also underlines how far ahead major manufacturers now have to plan when building new industrial capacity.
