Prestage Facility Named 'Fabulous Food Plant'

The Epstein-designed, engineered and constructed Prestage Foods of Iowa pork processing plant has been named a Fabulous Food Plant by Food Engineering Magazine.

The plant, located in Eagle Grove, Iowa, was completed and officially opened in May of this year. The nearly 700,000-square-foot facility is one of the most advanced food processing facilities in the world, designed to process roughly 600 million pounds of pork annually.

Jere Null, CEO of Prestage Foods of Iowa, told the magazine that they looked to us to build the infrastructure and building to support its needs. We saw them [Epstein] as uniquely qualified to bring the utilities, structure and workflow that would meet our needs.

Randy Tharp, our Vide President and Director of DesignBuild, is also featured in the article. Given [our] extensive experience in the design and construction of meat processing plants, Prestage came to us for a study that would examine alternates for various plant volumes and the associated total capital investment, labor requirement and building/site sizes. Upon their review of the study, they decided to move forward with the project and engaged Epstein for the turnkey design, engineering, equipment procurement and construction.

When asked what makes Prestage Foods of Iowa worthy of the title Fabulous Food Plant, Null said, Our plant deserves this recognition due to the innovative and efficient design and the integration of the best technology our industry has to offer. Employee safety, food safety and efficiency are blending together seamlessly to create the perfect environment to make consistent high-quality pork products. This facility has no match anywhere in the world.

Tharp added, All of the features weve outlined make this an exceptional state-of-the-art food processing plant. The combination of these plus the close attention paid to making the plant visually attractive and a pleasant environment for workers make it stand out amongst most any type of food plant operating in the United States, let alone within the meat industry where plants have typically been viewed as nuisances and not pleasant places to work.

Congratulations go out to our entire team for this significant achievement and recognition!