Meat+Poultry - June 2019 - 20

COVER STORY

Executives at the
Prestage Foods of
Iowa groundbreaking
included (from left): Ryan
Pudenz, Zach McCullen
III, Ron Prestage, Ph.D.,
Scott Prestage, John
Prestage and Jere Null.

MEAT+ POULTRY | 06.19 | www.meatpoultry.com

TEAM BUILDING
When it came time for Null and Prestage Foods
of Iowa to put together the executive team,
Null knew he wanted a diverse team in terms
of where executives might have spent the
bulk of their career before coming to Eagle
Grove. Prestage Foods boasts executives and
upper management from almost every protein
company in the United States.
"Our chief engineer came out of Tyson IBP.
I came out of Smithfield. Head of HR came out
of Perdue. Our animal handling guy is from
Hormel. Quality Assurance is from Farmland
Foods. We've got JBS people in our mix. We've
got a lot of Seaboard people as well," Null says.
"We really do believe that we put together an
excellent team from several backgrounds."
Null admits management of such a diverse
crew presents challenges at times, but still
believes the range of different ideas and the
compromises and solutions that come with
those different views of the way things should
run are worth it.
"It was engineered by design in that we
went out and tried to identify skill sets, tried to
build a diversity of thought into this and come
up with what we believe is going to be the
best operating and finest plant in the country,"
Null says.
With the executive team in place and the
plant starting to kill animals, to reach the

Prestage Farms

20

The Prestage team had to be flexible during
the building process, first changing its original
plans to open in November 2018 to January
2019. They felt November wasn't right due to it
being so close to the holidays and hiring new
people through Thanksgiving, Christmas and
the New Year would cause too many hiccups in
the process. When January 2019 rolled around,
they still didn't feel the plant was ready.
"I think the worst thing in the world you
can try to do with a new labor force is try to
start up prematurely," Prestage says. "So, we
postponed the startup until we thought we
were actually able to do it and give ourselves a
shot at doing it the right way instead of being
in a hurry and doing it wrong."
Prestage describes the end of construction
and that first day of killing hogs as both
exciting and terrifying. While Epstein, the
subcontractors and a crack team from Prestage
Foods completed construction and ran the
first animals through the line, maintenance
needed to tune technology and machines, and
HR needed to staff positions throughout the
company as volume will increase until first
shift hits capacity: 10,000 head per day. All
those things mixed with the fact that Prestage,
as a company, has traditionally produced hogs
and doesn't really have any experience with
running a pork processing plant, meant the
second phase of "construction" had just begun.
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Meat+Poultry - June 2019

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