Minnesota Ice Manufacturer Builds Capacity, Triples Accounts with Help of CDFI Financing
Client: Minnesota Ice
Client Location: Saint Paul, MN
CDFI: African Development Center
CDFI Service Area: Minnesota
Financing, with support from the Grow with Google Small Business Fund and Google.org Grant Program
Minnesota Ice is known as the world’s largest manufacturer of sculpture-grade ice and as the Midwest leader in artisan ice cube production. With entertainment, sports, and other event affiliates supplying their product to over 205 businesses, their services are consistently in high demand. Recognizing they would not be able to fulfill all their retailers this past summer without added manufacturing capacity, Minnesota Ice sought financing from African Development Center (ADC).
After successfully securing a small business loan from ADC, Minnesota Ice was able to purchase a new Vogt P24 ice machine, which creates 24 tons of ice per day, thus increasing their daily output to 39 tons of ice. With 40 accounts at the start of 2020, Minnesota Ice succeeded to double their accounts by the end of 2020 and has since grown to more than 120 packaged ice accounts. They have tremendous growth planned for the next few years, including the creation of four new jobs.
“This additional capacity will allow the Minnesota Ice team to continue forward adding new retailers for the next year and have extra ice on hand to sell to other manufacturers if needed,” shared the Minnesota Ice team.