North American plant-based food firm PURIS said Tuesday that its new pea protein production plant in Dawson, MN is now operational, doubling the company’s existing capacity for the product.

The facility will be operated by PURIS Proteins, a joint venture between the company and agribusiness Cargill. A former dairy plant was converted into a pea protein production site. With the completion of the retrofits, PURIS said it is now the only vertically-integrated, multi-plant pea protein production model in the country.

“This is more than a pea protein processing plant. We’re shaping the future of food,” Tyler Lorenzen, the CEO of PURIS Proteins, said in a company release. “The model we’ve built puts sustainable partnerships in reach of brands of all sizes. There’s impact at every level – it supports the local economy here in Dawson, introduces peas as a renewable stream for farmers, makes more plant-based foods available to consumers, and ultimately brings us one step closer to a sustainable food system.”

Cargill committed over $100 million to the construction of the new, 200,000-sq-ft processing site. PURIS initiated the project in response to rising demand for plant-based food products. Bloomberg Intelligence posited this August that the global market for plant-based foods could grow to $162 billion by 2030.

Plans to open the Dawson plant were first announced in August 2019, Powder & Bulk Solids reported. The agribusiness initially planned to invest $75 million in the facility.