A company formed this spring to package a locally made hard seltzer product is the latest tenant of a new Germantown industrial park.
Excent LLC is leasing approximately 128,000 square feet at the
Zilber Industrial 2 building at Germantown Gateway Corporate Park. The industrial park, developed by Milwaukee-based
Zilber Property Group, is located along Gateway Crossing, north of Holy Hill Road.
Tim Arnold, general manager of Excent, said the company was started around March or April. Its owners are Amy Walberg and Jim Sorenson. The two also co-own Milwaukee-based
PRESS Premium Alcohol Selzter.
"Their previous partner in packaging was just not meeting the needs by volume and quality they wanted, so they decided they were going to open up Excent and start packaging their product themselves," Arnold said.
Excent now employs 13 people on one shift. It cans about 7,000 cases each day.
Arnold said Excent will soon expand to a second shift and add employees, once it begins packaging for a new hard seltzer client. Its operations could further expand in the future if it lands even more customers, he said.
PRESS was founded in 2015, and is the only woman-owned seltzer company among the top 10 brands in the beverage category, according to the
company's website. It is available in the 48 continental states.
In January, Victor, New York-based
Constellation Brands Inc. announced it
acquired a minority stake in PRESS. Constellation's portfolio of alcoholic beverage brands includes Corona Extra, Modelo Especial, SVEDKA vodka and others.
The 140-acre Gateway Corporate Park lies northeast of Holy Hill Road and I-41. It contains 1.25 million square feet of industrial space across four buildings, all of which were either recently built or under construction.
It was first brought online in 2018, with the development of a roughly 706,800-square-foot building
for Briggs & Stratton Corp. It also has a 204,400-square-foot facility
for Smart Warehousing, the 198,600-square-foot building where Excent is located and a
146,000-square-foot building under construction. The Excent building has 70,678 square feet remaining for lease.
Other new industrial developments are located in the immediate area of the corporate park. They include the 100,000-square-foot
Dielectric Corp. headquarters and a 240,000-square-foot building for
Illing Co.
Another development site south of Holy Hill Road may eventually add 800,000 square feet of industrial space to the area. The development is being planned by Waukesha-based
Capstone Quadrangle.
An affiliate of Capstone Quadrangle recently acquired that land, located at N128 W20943 Holy Hill Road, for $3.83 million, according to state records. An affiliate of Brookfield-based
MLG Capital was the seller.
