CHARLESTON, W.Va. — A warehouse owned by the West Virginia National Guard has become a key strategic facility in the non-stop effort to make sure all West Virginians have adequate food. Governor Jim Justice helped dedicate a new refrigeration storage unit at the facility in Rock Branch last week. It’s the Governor’s most recent effort to help bolster the efforts of the state’s two largest food banks.
“It’s become really a center point for distribution for us and Mountaineer utilizes the space pretty heavily for volunteer activities,” said Cyndi Kirkhart CEO of the Facing Hunger Food Bank in Huntington.
The space, a 20-thousand square foot storage warehouse, located in the Rock Branch Industrial Park was made available to the two entities during the early days of the pandemic. During those initial days the West Virginia National Guard was assigned the mission of assisting in the distribution of food during the pandemic and needed a place to stage.
Furthermore, the initial days of the pandemic saw a cascade of new funding from the federal government to combat hunger which was unprecedented. Suddenly both food banks had far more food coming their way than they had space to store it. The Rock Branch Warehouse was critical to catch the overflow of additional food from the USDA and other sources.
Since then, the Guard has stood down in the mission, but the space has remained available to the two food networks and according to Kirkhart it has become a valuable asset in their work.
“The Rock Branch facility really helps us take the load off an already bursting at the seams warehouse,” she explained.
Facing Hunger has a 26,000 square foot facility in Huntington and has just purchased another downtown Huntington building which is being remodeled. The additional 10,000 square feet they have in Rock Branch is critical to the process.
Since a lot of the material delivered is perishable, the refrigeration unit dedicated by the Governor has also been helpful to bolster the program. Kirkhart also noted it’s an economic development tool since they’re now able to buy more products from local farmers.
“Both Mountaineer and Facing Hunger are expanding partnerships with local producers. Suddenly, we’ll be able to provide some storage for product and purchase more from them because we do have the availability to store it,” she explained.
Since Mountaineer Food Bank is based in Braxton County and Facing Hunger Food Bank is headquartered in Huntington, the satellite location has been an improvement for logistics by staging food for distribution closer to where the need exists.
“We have a lot of shelf stable product up there and it certainly has helped in terms of receiving,” said Kirkhart.
The refrigeration unit has made those logistics even better since it’s a place to store perishable dairy products until they can be put into the hands of the hungry. An added benefit was the facility is now more easily enabled to hire more local residents who live close to the Rock Branch warehouse.
“We’ve had such limitations with our warehouse space, to be able to receive all of the T-Fat product up there has just been a lifesaver,” she added.