Biotech yeast company to open Asheville lab, hire 65

ASHEVILLE – Executives of a California biotech company that makes yeast for alcoholic drinks plan to open a 26,000-square-foot combination laboratory and tasting room on South Charlotte Street.

The San Diego-based White Labs will hire 65 people and invest $8.1 million in the facility during the next five years, Chris White, the company's founder, president and CEO, said Thursday.

"We're excited. We hope to add to Asheville's community of craft (beer) brewing," White said.

The Asheville Brewers Alliance boasts 36 member organizations.

Wages for White Labs jobs will range from about $15 an hour for shipping and tasting-room positions to roughly $60,000 a year for microbiologists, White said.

"This is yet another exciting new business choosing to locate in Asheville, and it is an important biotechnology project for the state," Mayor Esther Manheimer said Thursday. "White Labs not only grows the supply chain in fermentation sciences but also contributes technical jobs to the active re-energizing of downtown."

Buncombe County officials offered White Labs $40,000 to base its operations here, said Dave Gantt, Board of County Commissioners chairman.

That one-time payment will be made after the county's tax department verifies that White Labs has invested the promised total of $8.1 million and company officials "show proof they have created the total number of jobs," said Jon Creighton, Buncombe County's planning director and assistant manager, in an email late Friday night.

A county commission public hearing also will be held before the county pays White Labs that $40,000, Creighton said.

"They're a natural fit for a growing industry," Gantt said. "They're nationally recognized and very viable."

White Labs will lease the property at 172 South Charlotte St. for up to five years at $1 annually, said Sam Powers, Asheville's director of economic development.

In exchange, White Labs will create a revenue stream for the city through taxes the company pays on personal property, machinery and equipment, Powers said.

"This is really a project that grows Western North Carolina's biotechnology cluster," he said.

Ben Teague, executive director of the Asheville-Buncombe County Economic Development Coalition, added, "White Labs is part of the revitalization of the Charlotte Street corridor."

Teague said coalition officials first contacted White Lab executives in January 2013.

Finding the right place to base White Labs' East Coast plant "has been a long process," White said.

Feeling out the region began in 2012, the chemist said, when he and his colleagues were leaning toward Pennsylvania and New Jersey as possibilities.

That year's announcements by New Belgium Brewing Company of Fort Collins, Colorado, and Sierra Nevada Brewing Co., based in Chico, California, to build facilities in Western North Carolina made an impact, however, White said.

Serious discussions with area officials began early last year, he said.

White Labs already works with local brewers including Wicked Weed and Oskar Blues, White said.

Adam Charnack, one of the South Slope-based Hi-Wire Brewing's four owners, also buys yeast from White Labs, he said. The company opening operations in Asheville will save Hi-Wire thousands of dollars, Charnack said.

"When you ship yeast, it needs to remain cold entire time," he said. "That means dry ice and insulated packaging coming overnight from a lab in California. It's extremely expensive. Having White Labs here locally is going to cut our costs significantly."

White plans for the first phase of construction to be completed in August, he said. By then, the White Labs Charlotte Street location will have personnel to handle logistics and fulfill orders.

Building the tasting room and the yeast-manufacturing facilities will occur in 2016, White said.

Founded in 1995, White Labs also has operations in Davis, California; Boulder, Colorado; Hong Kong; and Copenhagen, Denmark, White said.

This story was updated at 7:22 a.m., Monday, Jan 12, to reflect information a Buncombe County official provided the Citizen-Times over the weekend.