“Big Mo” – Helping to Build State-of-the-Art Facilities for Wholestone Farms

Over the past four years, Epstein has been providing DesignBuild services for a number of facility improvements to Wholestone Farms’ Fremont, Nebraska operations. Thus far, our team has completed a number of projects including, a new office building and employee welfare space, new CO2 stunner, new carcass cooling expansion, new wastewater pre-treatment system and new snap chill and trim blend operation.

In addition to these completed projects, Epstein is in the process of designing a new barn, new EQ (Equilibration Cooler) and employee locker room. Construction is in progress to build a new cut floor and a new rendering facility as well.

The cut floor and rendering facility are 110, 000 and 40,000 sf, respectively. Buildings of this scale and size require heavy lifting, quite literally. There is one piece of machinery that projects such as these require. Enter, “Big Mo”.

But who, or what, is “Big Mo”. It is a massive nine-axel, 18-wheel, all-terrain construction crane boasting a wide range of uses with powerful boom systems. Aside from the ability to lift a maximum of 900 tons, “Big Mo” is easy to transport, can fit in tight spaces, sets up quickly, and has a high lifting capacity. Most importantly, “Big Mo” is a critical part of the construction of our Wholestone projects. Currently, the crane is helping to lift new HVAC units to the aforementioned 110,000 sf cut floor building.

You can catch a bird's eye view of not only "Big Mo", but the sprawling Wholestone facilities here.

With the completion of each project, Epstein is providing Wholestone Farms with state-of-the-art features, modernizing the facilities that allow them to better compete with other large pork processors. These features include the cooling expansion, quickly cooling temperatures to create various cuts of pork; the new CO2 stunner to provide a humane method of processing; and, the wastewater pre-treatment facility that filters and treats the waste prior to it is sent to the city’s wastewater plant. For Wholestone Farms staff, a cafeteria designed to allow for exterior views and natural daylight to envelope a space that is oftentimes overlooked. The project team designed a pleasing, positive, and rejuvenating environment for the staff who seek this space as a respite from their production work environment.