Meat+Poultry - July 2022 - 25

wide array of products for carcasses that don't
hit the mark, the niche processor must buy right
because there aren't those offshoot programs.
" There's just not enough volume in the
primary program to have program B, C and
D for the outliers, " Lorentz said. " So really it
starts with the buy, it's the first challenge, and
then the second challenge is our fabrication
area has to do more knife work to amend that
buy variance down to a standard product. "
Lorentz Meats sometimes finds itself
adjusting activity on the fabrication floor on
the fly. If there's a marbling spec, for example,
that an animal doesn't meet and there's no
market for the underperforming middle, the
whole animal will need to be boned out.
" It changes the knife work that we have to
do, " Lorentz said. " It's not like the commodity
guys where they're pretty straight forward
that they're going to do a specific amount of
knife work to get that cow or hog through
the building. We might have to do a different
degree of knife work. "
DOWN TO BUSINESS
" Lorentz Meats is a Minnesota corporation, "
Lorentz said. " The shareholders of Lorentz
Meats are Organic Meat Co. and Rob and Mike
Lorentz. So that's the owners of Lorentz Meats. "
In 2014, Lorentz Meats founded the next
addition to its portfolio of small processing
companies, Vermont Packing House in
North Springfield, Vt. And two years ago,
Tewksbury, Mass.-based Walden Local
partnered with Lorentz Meats, so Walden
Local and the Lorentz Meats corporation own
Vermont Packing.
The link the companies share goes deeper
and strengthens beyond that, though. The
facilities operate as independent businesses.
The owners view themselves as co-packers
only with no Lorentz Meats or Vermont
Packing House brands.
" We are strictly a toll processor at both
facilities, " Lorentz said. " Ironically, in
Minnesota, Organic Meat Co., which is one of
the owners is one of our primary customers,
and in Vermont, Walden is the largest
customer of Vermont Packing House. But we
have separated the owner function from the
operations function. In both instances, that
owner acts like a customer to that company. "
The Lorentz facility in Cannon Falls covers
approximately 50,000 square feet and processes
about 100 head of beef or bison a day with 140
employees. Vermont Packing is about 40,000
square feet but has room to expand within the
building. Daily production is the equivalent of 50
head of beef or 120 pigs, depending on the day,
with about 70 employees.
" Both businesses do the kill and fab, but
they also do sausage making and specialty
packaging, " Lorentz said. " And in both
businesses, we work with all the proteins in
sausage making and specialty packaging. "
Lorentz Meats can fabricate beef and
make sausage at the same time, so it runs two
sausage making and specialty packaging shifts
and one kill and fab, Vermont Packing runs one
shift. Lorentz contracts a third-party company
www.meatpoultry.com | 07.22 | MEAT+POULTRY 25
" They're
lifestyle
businesses
and they're
not really
going to move
the needle
on meat
consumption
or highattribute
meat
consumption. "
- MIKE LORENTZ
http://www.meatpoultry.com
Meat+Poultry - July 2022

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