Sandpoint-based Unicep Packaging LLC says it has moved shipping, receiving, and administrative offices from a Liberty Lake distribution center space to the much larger, former Odom Corp. warehouse building on the West Plains and is renovating the structure to accommodate its needs.

Unicep issued a press release this week announcing the relocation to the 100,000-square-foot building at 4122 S. Grove Road, but company spokeswoman Karla Horton says the move occurred a number of months ago. It wasn’t clear why the company waited until now to disclose the move, but Horton says, “We are doing lots of construction in the building to make it our own.”

Horton says Unicep will occupy the entire structure. However, she declined to say whether the company is leasing or has bought the building or how much it’s spending on renovations. She also declined to say how many people will be employed there.

The Journal had reported in a story three years ago that the company’s distribution center at Liberty Lake encompassed 20,000 square feet of space and that its headquarters and manufacturing facilities in Sandpoint occupied 64,000 square feet of space. At that time, the company employed 150 people overall.

“With combined space between our Sandpoint, Idaho, facility and the new Spokane location, we will greatly expand our manufacturing and packaging capacity, allowing us to support current and future business growth,” the company said in the press release issued this week.

Founded in 1992, Unicep provides packaging and formulation mixing for gels, liquids, lotions, and creams for the medical device, over-the-counter, veterinary, cosmetic, and personal hygiene markets.

It announced in March 2014 that it had acquired a new manufacturing line that produces sealed single-dose products with enclosed applicators. It didn’t disclose the terms of that transaction.

The production line packages certain topical products in disposable containers, called SwabDose, which are sealed tubes with built-in swabs. Horton told the Journal at that time that SwabDose supports the growing demand for point-of-use production applications. The term “point-of-use applications” refers to products that are meant to be stored where they will be used.

Consumers can use SwabDose to apply premeasured lotions, creams, oils, and gels in a single, sanitary step, Horton said, adding that SwabDose is ideal for applying skin, nail-care, teeth-whitening, and other over-the-counter topical treatments.

Unicep’s high-speed equipment manufactures the single-use dispensers, injects the product into them, and seals them through an automated process called blow-filling.

Unicep expects to produce hundreds of millions of SwabDose units annually, Paul Night, vice president of engineering, said in the new release.

The company said in September 2012 that two Unicep executives, Marcus Anderson and Clint Marshall, had bought the company’s assets from founder John Snedden. Horton said at that time that the two men, both former executives with Liberty Lake-based Telect Inc., had joined the company’s executive management team five years earlier with the intent to purchase the company under Snedden’s succession plan.

Odom Corp., a big Bellevue, Wash.-based beverage distributor, moved its Spokane-region operations last September from the Grove Road building—which it leased—to a new $20 million, 200,000-square-foot distribution center that it owns at 5810 W. Thorpe Road.

In a story about Odom’s new larger quarters earlier this year, the Journal reported that the company owns the distribution franchise here for major domestic producers MillerCoors, Pabst Brewing Co., and North American Breweries, which includes Seattle-based Pyramid Brewing Co. among other beer makers scattered throughout the country.

Odom said it also distributes 47 brands of craft brews, including beers produced by Northern Lights Brewing Co., of Spokane, and Laughing Dog Brewing Inc., of Sandpoint. It also handles imported beer from 54 producers, 32 brands of soft drinks, a dozen brands of hard cider, and 12 brands of other adult beverages.