Plants’ Potential: Two Meat Processing Facilities Could Offer Producers New Opportunities
- Dave Price
- Aug 22
- 3 min read
American Farmland Owner tracks announcements for meat processing operations that could bring new or expanded facilities in key places across the United States. Projects in Florida and Nebraska that are in different stages of development could increase access for local producers.
Florida: ‘Project Pan’ Could Redevelop Former Pork Processing Plant
A Florida proposal includes a temporary code name of “Project Pan.” The practice of keeping a company’s name secret from the public has been used in other jurisdictions across the country as local leaders finalize incentives agreements. “Project Pan” has been in the works for months and awaits final approval from the Jacksonville City Council next Tuesday.
City documents shared with American Farmland Owner describe the development as “…an international meat processing company, seeking to establish a meat processing facility. The project site being considered is located in Northwest Jacksonville within a designated Brownfield Redevelopment Area and in a Level 1 Economically Distressed Area.”
The property is a former pork processing facility owned by Tyson Foods and could lead to a $28 million overhaul with capability to process one million pounds of meat per week. City documents state that the renovation will “bring up to code an existing vacant single story refrigerated warehouse block building, that will be utilized as a meat processing facility, resulting in up to $28,000,000 in new Private Capital Investment.”
RELATED: This project focused on pork will bring expansion in Pennsylvania.
Sustainable Beef Plant in North Platte, Nebraska
A Nebraska proposal also started out with a secret name: “Project Lagoon.” Cattle ranchers created the original concept for development, and Walmart invested in it. Sustainable Beef LLC is now operating a $400 million plant in North Platte that has the capacity to process 1,500 head of cattle daily.
In some ways, this project is an experiment for the community of 22,000 people. There are non-traditional efforts to lure the necessary workforce including only utilizing a day shift for workers, which eliminates the challenge of finding reliable employees for second or third shifts. It also invested in ergometric machinery to try to minimize the toll the tedious process demands.
Those efforts hope to prove stronger than several challenges:
Competing with the “Big Four” meatpackers – JBS, Tyson Foods, Cargill, and National Beef. Those four giants control 85% of the beef industry.
Cattle herd sizes fell to their lowest level since the 1950s.
Workers without permanent legal status in the United States make up an estimated one in three to one in two meatpacking plant employees. The Trump administration has worked to remove them from the U.S.
A Biden administration parole program that legally authorized temporary workers from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela provided an estimated 10% to 20% of the meat industry’s employees. But President Donald Trump ended that program.
RELATED: A meat plant in this Midwest town is already experiencing the impact of the Trump administration’s actions to prevent 200 temporary employees from remaining on the job.
Because of the uncertainty of immigrants’ availability to fill positions, the North Platte beef plant may need a heavier reliance on locals to join the company. That could mean hiring people who already live in the area and luring others from elsewhere to come to town. This Wall Street Journal article explains the possible benefits of the beef plant.
