Officials with the new Seaboard Triumph Foods pork processing plant in Sioux City say the plant will be operational by early September. Seaboard Foods president and CEO Terry Holton says about two-thirds of the hogs going through the plant will come from Seaboard and Triumph facilities. “Seaboard will provide one-third and Triumph Foods will provide a third,” Holton said, “and then, whether it’s through contracts from local producers or some spot market, we will buy one-third from local producers that exist today.”

The plant is designed to process 21-thousand hogs per day. “One question several people have asked is, ‘What impact are you going to have on hog prices?’ Well, we’re probably going to raise them, because it’s new capacity. That just how it works,” Holton said.

Officials say the plant will feature the latest in robotics and automation. It will employ 11-hundred people by the end of this year. The addition of a second shift in 2018 will add another 1,000 workers.

(Radio Iowa, w/reporting by Ken Anderson, Brownfield Ag News)