ConAgra Foods Inc. announced Friday that its Lamb Weston processing facility will expand operations in Boardman.

The $30 million investment will add additional processing capacity for making formed products such as hash brown patties and potato puffs. The addition of the line at the company’s existing facility is expected to add 50 jobs to the 390 people already employed by the company in Boardman.

With continued increase in demand for frozen potato and formed products, this capacity expansion is necessary to fulfill Lamb Weston’s global growth projections, according to a press release from the company.

Construction on the processing line is expected to begin this spring, with completion in 2017. The added line will increase processing capacity by approximately 50 million pounds.

“With the frozen potato category growing globally, we have tremendous opportunity to support our customers’ growth in the U.S. and around the world,” said Lamb Weston President Greg Schlafer in a press release. “To capture that growth, we need to make more products. Expanding our operations in the Columbia Basin — with access to great potatoes, people and ports — just makes sense.”

The facility in Boardman is close to growing, storage and shipping operations, with easy access to the Port of Morrow. The company opened an initial expansion of the facility in June 2014, adding 300 million pounds of capacity with a new fry line. That $200 million project included plans for the addition announced Friday.

“Lamb Weston’s planned expansion shows their continued commitment to the Port of Morrow, Boardman and the Mid-Columbia region as the right place to do business,” said Gary Neal, general manager of the Port of Morrow. “Their ongoing investments add good paying jobs to our region and we are fortunate to have such great partners at the Port.”

Lamb Weston employees approximately 4,500 people at a corporate office and seven manufacturing facilities in the Columbia Basin, and operates 22 manufacturing facilities in North America, Europe and China.

Lamb Weston was established in 1950 by F. Gilbert Lamb in a former co-op plant in Weston, Oregon. Lamb and the company also invented the water gun knife in 1960, which was used to make french fries by moving potatoes with water at a high speed into a sharpened steel grid to turn the whole spuds into fries. The company entered to domestic potato processing market and withing 10 years had expanded by adding new processing facilities in American Falls, Idaho; Connell and Quincy, Washington; and Hermiston.

ConAgra Foods announced late last year that it will separate from Lamb Weston later this year, forming two separate publicly traded companies. That spin-off is expected to be completed sometime this fall, with Lam Weston being headquartered in Kennewick, Washington.

ConAgra Foods, which currently has headquarters in Omaha, Nebraska, will become Conagra Brands and also move it’s corporate offices to Chicago this year. ConAgra aquired Lamb Weston in 1988.