Tasty Baking Co. has transitioned the remaining twoTastykakeproduction lines from the company’s Hunting Park, Pa., facility to its new, state-of-the-art, LEED-registered bakery at the Philadelphia Navy Yard.

Tasty Baking Co. has transitioned the remaining twoTastykakeproduction lines from the company’s Hunting Park, Pa., facility to its new, state-of-the-art, LEED-registered (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) bakery at the Philadelphia Navy Yard. As a result, the company’s 88-year-old, six-story Hunting Park bakery at 2801 Hunting Park Avenue in the Allegheny West area of Philadelphia has now officially closed for production.

Tasty Baking announced in April that it had entered into an agreement with TKMG Associates, L.P. and its guarantor, Metro Development Co., for the sale of the Hunting Park property along with the company’s former corporate offices and distribution center at 3413 Fox Street for $6 million. The company also has sold the physical assets at the old Hunting Park Bakery for $0.7 million.

The full operation of the seven production lines at Tasty Baking’s new 345,000-sq.-ft. manufacturing and distribution facility occurs more than three years after the company announced its strategic transition plan in May 2007. The one-story bakery at the Philadelphia Navy Yard features new, highly automated baking equipment and a “straight line flow” from production to packaging to warehouse that opens significant opportunity for product and packaging innovation. The new-and-improved lines also produce higher efficiency with the company’s core products, includingKrimpets, Kandy Kakes, Juniors, pies, cookie bars and cupcakes.

Upon receiving official certification from the U.S. Green Building Council, the bakery will be the world’s largest “green” bakery, featuring environmentally-friendly components such as water conservation, the use of recycled building materials, daylight harvesting and energy-efficient HVAC systems.

“While we celebrate our new bakery and the future of the Tastykake brand with significantly-enhanced manufacturing capabilities, we simultaneously celebrate the legacy of the Hunting Park bakery and its irreplaceable role in the development and growth of the company and our beloved brand,” said Charles P. Pizzi, president and CEO. “Now that we have transitioned all seven of our production lines to the new facility at the Navy Yard, we can turn our focus to the optimization of our operations there, a process which we expect to last through the third quarter of 2010. We believe that the many chapters of Tastykake history at the Hunting Park bakery will be tightly bound to those chapters that we will begin to write at the Philadelphia Navy Yard.”

The new bakery’s lobby, which will serve as the public gateway and ticketing center for The Tastykake Bakery Tour, features an oversized wall print of the Hunting Park facility. The Tour, which is expected to open to the public in 2011, also will contain historical film and prints from the Hunting Park bakery. Additionally, Tasty Baking will continue its support of the Allegheny West Foundation, a Philadelphia-based community development corporation that serves the community around the Hunting Park facility.