Cargill Pork’s $29 Million Iowa Feed Mill Begins Operations

On May 12, Wichita, Kansas-based Cargill Pork will be holding a dedication ceremony to mark the beginning of operations at its new $29 million feed mill in Hendrick, Iowa. The mill will have an annual production capacity of 350,000 tons of feed, operating 24 hours a day, six days a week to supply more than 100 regional hog farms.

“With the planet’s population headed for 9 billion people by 2050, it is important to us that we produce high quality, nutritious, affordable protein in the most sustainable way possible,” Mike Luker, president of Cargill Pork tells Feedstuffs.

Twenty minutes away in Ottumwa, Iowa, is Cargill Pork’s pork processing facility, which recently saw the completion of another $25 million project aimed at doubling the facility’s daily bacon production, bringing Cargill Pork’s total investment in the region to approximately $60 million.

“People love bacon and we see demand continuing to increase. As consumer demand for bacon has increased, our retail and foodservice customers want more bacon, and we intend to meet their needs,” Ottumwa plant general manager Randy Zorn adds.

The new 15-story tall mill at Hendrick will load and unload one truck every 10 minutes, or 100 trucks per day, processing 6 million bushels of local corn into feed for hog farms within a 35-mile radius. The Ottumwa pork plant harvests 18,000 to 19,000 hogs daily, and is one of Cargill’s two large-scale pork plants, the second being in Beardstown, Illinois.

More on this story