CANDO – A pasta plant here is getting a second life, which in turn is giving a helping hand to many in the community.

Cando Pasta LLC was formed in April this year by area entrepreneurs Jim and Bruce Gibbens, who are first cousins, and Bruce Satrom and Steve Johnson.

“We bought the plant and assets from Noodles by Leonardo, the old factory that had been closed down for about nine months to a year,” Jim Gibbens said. “We opened for business on May 1 and we actually started producing pasta about Sept. 15.”

Family of entrepreneurs

While Jim and Bruce Gibbens are new to the pasta factory, they’re not new to the Cando area. Both are fourth-generation farmers and businessmen.

“Our family has been in business here in this community for over 130 years,” Gibbens said. “We were here before there was a town here.”

Four of Gibbens’ five daughters are involved in Cando Pasta, along with two sons-in-law.

Jim and Bruce also own Gibbens Farms, which is a 12,000-acre grain farm. They are also part-owners in Sky Can Ltd., a 6,000-head pig operation. Other businesses the family owns include the local hardware store, Tesoro gas station and liquor store, an auto sales store and 61 apartment units.

Between the eight businesses the Gibbens family is involved in, there are between 80 and 90 full-time employees.

Cando Pasta

Cando Pasta is a long- and short-goods pasta factory.

“What that means is we make macaroni and spaghetti,” Gibbens said.

Macaroni comes in all sorts of shapes and sizes. Some of the different kinds produced at Cando Pasta include elbow macaroni, which is the most common form of pasta there; medium shells; rotini; deluxe shells, which are smaller like those used in mac and cheese; stick mac, a straight version of pasta used in mac and cheese; and penne.

The long goods include spaghetti, lasagna and angel hair pasta. Currently only the short-goods line is running, but Gibbens expects the long-goods line to get going in the next month or so.

When Gibbens wasn’t busy farming or running one of his many businesses, he found time to be the mayor of Cando for eight years and was on the city council for 16 years prior to that, 12 of which was spent as president of the council.

He’s presently the chairman of the Towner County Economic Development Corp. His executive director is JoAnne Rodenbiker, who is responsible for getting Gibbens involved with Cando Pasta in the first place.

Gibbens said Rodenbiker was mandated by the Corp.’s board of directors to find a buyer for the vacant pasta plant. The name she came up with was Bruce Satrom. Even though Rodenbiker had found a potential buyer, a little more work needed to be done before the deal was closed.

“Bruce, right around Christmastime, the first of the year, he decided that this was a bigger endeavor than he wanted to take on by himself,” Gibbens said. “JoAnn asked me to go see if I could salvage that deal and get Bruce to come in and do that, and if he needed any help. Well I did such a good job of selling it to Bruce I sold it to myself, too.”

Since then they have been taking on the challenge of retrofitting and modernizing the 33-year-old factory.

“We’ve spent well over $500,000 in retrofitting and modernizing the equipment here. What’s that, just the cost of one quad tractor or combine?” he said with a laugh.

The retrofitting has taken longer and cost more than the owners had anticipated. Gibbens said they had to do a thorough cleaning, including grinding the floors and painting everything. They are getting the plant as clean and sanitary as possible in preparation for a third-party food audit.

“What that means is a third-party inspection comes in and says that your plant is either clean, organized and sanitary enough to produce food or it’s not,” Gibbens said. “There are some markets you don’t need a third-party audit for, but really that is the industry standard, to be third-party audited so that they can guarantee that this is a safe food source.”

Relying on experience

Although Cando Pasta might be new, many of its employees are not. Of the 22 full-time employees currently there, 14 had experience working in the Noodles by Leonardo plant of anywhere from six or eight years all the way up to 32.

“I’ve got three guys working here that have over 25 years of experience in this plant,” Gibbens said.

A few of the experienced employees are at retirement age, and Gibbens had to coax them back to work just like he coaxed Satrom to invest in the plant. Among those workers is Steve Torpy, a 71-year-old, who has been at the plant for 32 years.

“I coaxed him out of retirement to come and help us part-time,” Gibbens said, noting Torpy is using his time at the plant to help train his eventual replacements.

Pasta by the pound

The plant has three Demaco pasta presses, two of which are short-goods lines, with the remaining one a long-goods line. An Ocrim durum flour mill will eventually grind semolina flour to make into pasta, and there are all sorts of packaging machines that Gibbens said are too numerous to mention.

“We can put out product in 1,300-pound tote sacks down to 7 1/4-ounce mac and cheese boxes and anything in between,” he said.

Always looking for help

At this point Cando Pasta is probably 50-percent staffed. Gibbens said they will have 40 to 50 people on the payroll when they get all three production lines and the flour mill up and running.

Gibbens said he is always recruiting potential new employees to any of his businesses, and Cando Pasta is no different.

The business of pasta

Cando Pasta’s core business is as a wholesaler, selling bulk totes of pasta to other packers who in turn use the pasta for their own brands. To diversify their sales channels, Gibbens said they also sell some pasta under their own private label.

Along with a table full of individual 1-pound pasta bags at the plant, Cando Pasta also sells product at Cando Home and Hardware and Pioneer Bulk Foods in Cando.

In addition, Gibbens said they are also working to get their pasta into area grocery stores in the future. He is hopeful that will come to fruition six months to a year from now. Between now and then Gibbens said they still have a lot of work to do.

“We’ve got to get some barcoding and some labeling and we’ve got to understand what packaging they’re looking for. Obviously those retail 1-pound bags are probably not what we’re going to hit the grocery stores with,” Gibbens said. “The whole packaging thing is just another thing that we’re trying to learn.”

Along with packaging, he said they also have to learn how to properly grind semolina flour from durum wheat. They are currently buying their flour from the North Dakota State Mill and Elevator in Grand Forks.

They are still learning how to make pasta, with Gibbens noting short-goods are easier to make than long-goods, which is why they started with short-goods first.

“We think it’ll take another six months to three years to develop all the potential for this business,” he said. “This could almost be overwhelming if we didn’t have the employees that have some knowledge on how the place runs.”

Cando Pasta held an open house Nov. 13 which was attended by 225 people from the area. Gibbens said Noodles by Leonardo had garnered a bad reputation, and Cando Pasta wanted to make sure the community knew there was new leadership at the plant and things would be changing.

“I think we were well received within the community. We’ve gotten a lot of community support in this endeavor,” Gibbens said. “People are happy that the plant is opened up and we’re trying to keep it going and we’re employing some more people in the community.”