SIOUX CITY — Construction-related delays will push back the projected opening of the Seaboard Triumph Foods pork plant by at least a month, officials said Monday.
The $300 million plant had been forecast to go online by around July 31. Chief Operating Officer Mark Porter said the company will need more time to get equipment in place and complete the commissioning process before the 925,000-square-foot plant plant in the city's Bridgeport West Business Park becomes operational.
New potential start-up dates are either Aug. 28 or Sept. 5, he said. The company, a joint venture between Seaboard Foods and Triumph Foods, broke ground in September 2015 on the state-of-the-art plant, which will have the capacity to slaughter 21,000 hogs per day.
Porter said the delay is not related to hiring for the plant, which will start with a few hundred workers and quickly ramp up to about 1,100 for the first shift. A second shift, scheduled to start in May 2018, will increase total employment to around 2,000.
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STF has been hiring about a dozen people a week to fill the 200 salaried positions, but has not started hiring for the 900 hourly production and maintenance workers. Porter said the company has received numerous applications for the hourly jobs since it started advertising earlier this year.
“We are feeling really really good about hiring for the hourly positions,” he said.
With metro Sioux City's unemployment rate at a near historic low, Porter also confirmed STF has reached out to a state agency to see about making the city a primary site for refugee resettlement.
“This is going to be a long process; years in the making,” he said. “The refugee thing is not something that’s going to impact us here at startup — that’s going to take awhile to generate any real folks relocating to the area.”
In addition, STF has contacted local staffing agencies, including J&L Staffing and Recruiting, which Porter said is working on creating an EB3 Visa program to bring Vietnamese immigrants to the area.
Bringing more workers into the region, Porter said, also could help other large Siouxland employers looking to expand. The jobless rate in the metro area was at a 16-year low of 2.9 percent in April.
Porter emphasized that STF is looking locally first for employees and projects that potential workers will come from as far away as 60 miles. He also said the company hopes to lure people from outside the region and people from other larger Midwestern cities who are looking for a chance to earn a good wage in a region with a lower cost of living and good environment for raising a family.