The former Local Pride meatpacking plant in Gordon, closed since September 2008, has been sold to Open Range Beef, an investment group registered in the Omaha area. City Manager Fred Hlava says the company expects to reopen the plant by the end of the year.
“I guess it’s going to take at least 3-to-4 months to do some minor renovations plus all the cleanup that needs to be done to pass the USDA inspection for the certification. It appears at this time that there will be 70-to-80 employees based here.”
Gordon and Missouri-based First Bank Business Capital acquired the building and equipment at a trustee sale in 2009, the city holding first lien after Local Pride failed to repay a $500,000 loan using economic development grant funds received by Gordon.
Hlava says there was always a lot of interest show in the plant, but the lingering recession kept a firm deal from coming together until Open Range Beef came into the picture.
“It’s just been a long process of advertising, contacting people, and fielding calls from the public that were interested in purchasing a packing house. The city and state have no involvement in this at all; the plant has been sold outright and the investment group owns it. ”
Hlava says the city feels very fortunate to be working with Open Range, explaining that its principals have financial depth and over 60 years of combined experience in beef processing and related successful businesses.
Open Range spokesman Roy Wiggs says the investment group is very solid and has an established customer base that’s an intricate part of its business model. Hlava says the key is the plant’s relatively small size…a maximum of about 250 animals a day.
“The size gives it the flexibility to do different kinds of product or cattle base on any given day. They can do natural cattle, custom-kill cattle, bulls, fed-cattle – it just gives them great flexibility.”
Hlava says that’s a big difference from the big packing plants run by the major beef companies because their economy of scale means they have to have structure and an organized kill schedule that doesn’t allow for quick changes.
Wiggs, who will oversee customer development and communications for Open Range, says a plant manager will be on site in the near future to handle day-to-day operations, with 6-to-8 highly experienced butchers cross-trained in all phases of beef processing coming in.
The remaining 60-to-70 employees will be hired locally, and Wiggs says that the Gordon community is renowned for its strong work ethic…adding that “with the strength of the local work force and continued support of the city, we anticipate slaughtering and fabricating cattle here for a very long time.”
Hlava is excited and pleased that Open Range is committed to the long term because support for the ag industry and creating new jobs is important to this part of the state.
“In the western part of the state and rural Nebraska, anytime you can put together a project that employs people – whether it’s 1, 5, 50, or 80 – it’s a great thing for the community.
Local Pride was a subsidiary of Agriprocessors Inc, and produced kosher beef that was further processed at Agriprocessors main plant in Postville, Iowa, until a 2008 immigration raid at the Iowa facility triggered a series of financial and legal setbacks that forced the company into bankruptcy.
Sholom Rubashkin, the CEO and son of the founder, was eventually convicted on dozens of criminal counts in connection with loans to the company and was sentenced to 27 years in prison.