Duke Energy's Taylorsville Site Sits Beside One Company's Campus

Impact

Duke's 13-year-old program (53 sites prepped, 32 wins, $15 billion recruited) is no longer the only utility running this playbook: Indiana Michigan Power launched its own 'Future Ready Sites Accelerator' this year with a different site-selection vendor, vetting five competing sites in DeKalb County, Muncie, and South Bend, while NIPSCO has instead routed large-load customers through a separate GenCo structure rather than compete on site marketing. That means Indiana's industrial land supply is now actively being fought over by rival utilities, not just rival communities.

Impact

What's not stated plainly: Grillo's Pickles and King's Hawaiian are both subsidiaries of the same parent, Irresistible Foods Group, meaning this 'cluster' is functionally a single company's campus, and IFG has publicly signaled optionality to add more of its own brands (Shaka Tea, Innovation Bakers) on adjacent land, which could make Duke's 'open market' marketing moot if IFG claims the newly readied parcels itself. Separately, King's Hawaiian's reported wage near $30/hour sets a de facto floor that any other incoming tenant, or any other Bartholomew County employer competing for the same rural workforce, will have to match or beat.

Watch

Whether any of the three 2026 sites converts to a named tenant (historically about 60% of Duke-prepared sites eventually do) and how I&M's competing five-site cohort performs in the same recruiting cycle.

Watch

Whether Irresistible Foods Group itself (rather than an outside tenant) moves to claim the Force Holdings/Palladin parcels for an additional brand before the site reaches open market.

For the huddle

What does the Duke Energy Taylorsville site mean for my labor pool?

If you staff food or production roles in Bartholomew County, benchmark your turnover now in the roles that overlap with food production. Reported wages near $30 an hour at the future King's Hawaiian plant will pull workers before the plant even opens.

This story

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