Sioux Center, Iowa — Work continues on the $29 million expansion of the former Sioux-Preme packing plant south of Sioux Center. The Sioux Center facility was acquired by Perdue Farms in 2015 as part of its acquisition of Natural Food Holdings and its brands, and now they’re building onto the plant and they’ll be adding more jobs.
We talked with Senior Vice President Of Pork Operations for Perdue, Gary Malenke, and he tells us more.
He says it will allow the company to take advantage of some of the state-of-the-art automation that the industry is moving towards.
According to Malenke, the new construction will not add production capacity to the pork plant, but it will give them new opportunities.
He tells us that they will be adding about 50 jobs.
He says they’ll be hiring for some of the more technical positions in the next 2 months, and for the production positions about 60 days before they start. Malenke tells us that they plan to open the addition in November, but with all the cool, wet weather, they’ve used up their extra construction days — so that might be a little optimistic. He says time will tell.
