Triumph Foods, equal owner of the recently opened Seaboard Triumph Foods plant in Sioux City, Iowa, today announced intentions to expand its pork processing plant in St. Joseph, Mo.
According to the St. Joseph, Mo., News-Press, Triumph plans to expand the Missouri plant by 12,000 square feet for a project that includes robotic palletization technology to increase the speed of outbound shipping and reduce manual handling of finished products. Triumph states the addition will also allow for product storage with its strategic partner, Seaboard Foods, to expand its marketing and selling products to domestic retail and food service customers.
The expansion is expected to be completed by spring 2018.
Triumph employs more than 2,700 people in St. Joseph, and a company spokesman told Meatingplace.com that though this expansion is not expected to create new jobs, it will allow Triumph to prepare for growth that “could translate to additional positions in the future.”
Pork processed by Triumph is marketed and sold under the PrairieFresh Premium Pork brand.
“This project is representative of the company’s continued commitment to implement innovative solutions aimed at improving customer service, upgrading ergonomics and enhancing our capability to the produce and distribute new products to the market,” Mark Campbell, chief executive officer with Triumph, says in the News-Press article.
In July, Triumph Foods was working to complete a $1.5 million expansion that included new machinery in a ham boning line. That project was expected to create 72 new jobs.
The Seaboard Triumph Foods plant in Sioux City was a much-anticipated project, as was the completion of the Clemens Food Group plant in Coldwater, Mich., as the two plants opened for business on Sept. 5. Shackle space had been at a premium in existing processing plants, and U.S. hog producers are in expansion mode. These two plants added potential to harvest 22,200 hogs per day once fully operational.
