Last week's announcement of a $460,000,000 expansion to the Simplot plant, west of Portage la Prairie is beginning to sink in across the region.

Portage Regional Economic Development Executive Director Vern May says their real work starts now that the deal's official.

"So, when you deal with a project of this scope," he says, "We have our municipal leaders, in partnership with the province, and Manitoba Agriculture, brokering the deal. Where PRED gets involved is really now, where we start looking at the logistics of this project, and making sure that other investors and developers are poised to take the greatest advantage of it."

May says we may see more economic interest in this area.

"We noticed immediately, on the heels of the announcement, the phone and the e-mail was pinging like crazy," he says, "In terms of people saying 'hey, we were talking to you before, but we think that we need to be having that conversation seriously now.' So, I'm pretty confident that over the next 12 to 18 months. we're going to see an increased frequency of some announcements."