Meat+Poultry - December 2016 - 17

With its new plant
in Dixon, California,
Superior Farms
works to grow the
US lamb industry
BY K I M B E R L I E C LYM A | kc l y m a @ s o s l a n d.c o m

W

hen the leadership at Superior
Farms decided to invest $17
million in a new lamb plant
adjacent to their existing Dixon, California, lamb
facility, many people thought they were crazy.
After all, the US lamb industry is small. Only 2
million lambs are processed in the US each year,
compared to the New Zealand lamb market that
processes 30 million per year and the Australian
lamb market that processes 70 million per year.
And compared to other proteins processed
annually in the US - 120 million hogs and 30.3
million beef cows - lamb represents a small
percentage of the US meat industry.
But Superior Farms executives, led by Rick
Stott, president and CEO, saw something the
skeptics didn't see - an exceptional growth
opportunity for an up-and-coming industry,
and the chance to produce a truly sustainable
protein at a time when the meat industry is
constantly facing environmental scrutiny.

CHANGING DIRECTION
Stott is relatively new to the lamb industry, his
tenure at Superior Farms started just a few
years ago. Prior to assuming the top spot at
Superior Farms in early 2013, Stott spent 20
years in the beef industry, with Agri Beef Co.,
based in Boise, Idaho. When he left Agri Beef
he was serving as executive vice president. He
was an integral member of the management
team that helped grow the integrated beef
company from a $125 million firm when he first
started, to a company with revenues of close to
$1 billion at the time he left.
"I got a lot of grief when I decided to go
from the cattle business to the sheep business.
Being one of the key executives at Agri Beef,
it came as a big shock to people that I would
leave the company and the beef industry," Stott
explains. "But it gave me the opportunity to
do something in my career that I had always

wanted to do - lead a company.
"I also saw a great opportunity to take the
skills I had learned at Agri Beef - the skills
about developing brands, market segmentation
and product differentiation - and apply them
to the lamb industry, and specifically to
Superior Farms."
Stott sees a huge opportunity for growth in
the US lamb market. There was a 14 percent
increase in demand for lamb in foodservice
and 9 percent increase in retail over the past
two years, he says. And 40 percent of US
consumers say they have never tried lamb. "It's
fun to watch that demand starting to grow and
to see lamb being discovered," he says.
"We believe the opportunity for the future
of this industry has never been better. That's
why we built this plant," Stott says. "We're so
optimistic about what we have right in front of
us that we're willing to invest our own money
as employee owners. We see something in this
industry that's pretty exciting."
Superior Farms, with annual revenues of
around $250 million, has been an Employee
Stock Ownership Program (ESOP) company
since 1981. Many of the plant's 146 employees
have been with the company for more than 15
years (the longest serving employee has been
there since Superior Farms purchased the
plant in 1981). The company has paid out over
$20 million to retired employee owners since
the inception of the ESOP.
Superior Farms was founded in 1964
in Ellensburg, Washington, and in 1981,
purchased the Dixon facility (which was
originally built in 1923). The company has
an additional plant in Denver, which it took
ownership of in the late 1990s, as well as
a plant in Hawarden, Iowa, formerly Iowa
Lamb, which now produces pet treats for
the company. Superior also has a sales and
fabrication facility based in Chicago, and sales
facilities in both Los Angeles and Boston.
The decision to build a new plant in Dixon
was a relatively simple one once the choices
were considered, Stott says. "Our old plant was
a 1920s vintage plant, so we were going to have
to make some changes in the next five years or
so. Our options were to try to redesign it bit by
bit, not knowing what we might find when we
peeled back the layers. Or just leave California
altogether and work out of our Colorado plant.
The third option was to build a completely new

"We're so
optimistic
about what we
have right in
front of us that
we're willing
to invest our
own money
as employee
owners."
- RICK STOTT

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