The Wholestone Farms pork processing plant in Fremont, Neb., plans to double its capacity per year and add a second shift, upon completion of a plant renovation and expansion, said a company official, according to a local news source.
The company, owned by 200 farmers in several midwestern states, acquired the plant from Hormel in 2018 and has been renovating it since.
Receiving a $25 million federal grant through the USDA Meat and Poultry Processing Expansion Program, the company will use the funds to pay for a portion of the costs. However, the total costs of the project are “well above” the grant amount, Luke Minion, interim chief executive officer and board chairman of Wholestone Farms, said in the article.
While the plant has been operating for decades, the company has planned and started construction on a number of projects, including a new wastewater treatment plant, a rendering facility and a new cut floor, which will be finished in September of this year, Minion explained in the article.
The location currently employs around 1,300 and can process approximately 11,000 pigs per day with one eight-hour shift, totaling around 2.8 million pigs per year.
Upon completion of the project, the plant will be able to run 16 hours per day, utilizing a second shift with the addition of between 800 and 1,000 employees, and will raise its annual capacity to approximately 5.6 million pigs per year.
Despite a labor shortage across many industries in the U.S., Minion told the local news source that he’s confident that with some planning, the company can staff the second shift from within the area.
“This facility has been in this town for a very long time,” Minion added in the article. “And so there’s a lot of people familiar with this work, familiar with this workforce, and now the facility is really all new and so it’s a great place to work.”
Along with the increase in processing capacity, customers should start to see the Wholestone Farms brand more often in retail markets, the article said.
Selling all of its products from the Fremont plant to Hormel from 2018 to 2021, the company expanded their selling to include Hormel and others in 2022. Since Jan. 2023, for the first time, the company has started putting their own label on retail products.
As 85% of the pork supply chain in the U.S. is owned by four large meat packing companies, Minion said in the article that their project is not only an expansion of capacity, but its also diversifying who’s in control of the pork supply chain.
