Food leads the manufacturing pack in Southern Nevada

Nevada’s manufacturing industry is heating up. But it’s not the type of manufacturing you might think. “It’s a multi-step process. Corn is cooked, washed and ground, then pressed out into tortilla chip shapes,” said Allan Perkins, director of manufacturing at Las Vegas tortilla chip manufacturer R.W. Garcia. “They are first baked at about 700 degrees Fahrenheit. Then they are lightly fried in corn or sunflower oil at about 330 degrees Fahrenheit.”Perkins said R.W. Garcia added 35 employees between its two 65,000-square-foot facilities last year, contributing to Nevada’s roughly 23,498 employees in manufacturing in 2017. That’s up 16 percent, or 3,218 jobs, from 2011, according to data from the Nevada Department of Employment, Training and Rehabilitation.A December report on Southern Nevada by Las Vegas-based Applied Analysis said, “Employment in the manufacturing and logistics industry has outperformed the national average in each of the past six years. And, since 2011, industry employment has grown at two and a half times the national rate.”