Feed & Additive Magazine Issue 3 April 2021

NEWS 20 FEED & ADDITIVE MAGAZINE April 2021 Norpel set to launch new processing facility for pet food N orthern Pelagic Group, LLC (Norpel) an- nounced it will open a new processing fa- cility focused on pet proteins later in 2021. The pet food “prep kitchen” will produce fresh and frozen proteins for pet food manufacturers and enable Norpel to sustain growth and capitalize on new op- portunities in the pet food sector. Norpel’s new processing facility in northeastern Pennsylvania will create 80 plus full-time new jobs. The move to PA has been in the works for over a year now. Norpel closed on the 70,000SF facility in the Humboldt Industrial Park in January 2021 and construction has begun to convert it into a tempera- ture-controlled food- grade processing facility. Ad- ditionally, Norpel will construct a 25,000SF Cold Storage Facility. Norpel’s new location in PA will bring it closer to raw materials in the region, its cus- tomer base and the Port of Philadelphia. The new location will feature three processing lines that will expand the company’s capacity on existing products and enable new opportunities with customers. Pet food has been a hot industry over the last few years with major investments, IPOs and major ac- quisitions of brand names. The United States pet food market has grown steadily and is expected to continue to grow at 4.5% through 2025 according to Grandview Research. Norpel has positioned itself as a provider of premium and sustainable proteins for pet food manufacturers. As the pet food brands have grown, so has Norpel as the company works with many household brand names in the pet space. Tyson Foods expanding case-ready meat production A s part of its strategy to in- crease production of con- sumer ready products, Tyson Foods, Inc. is expanding its case-ready meats business by repurposing plant capacity in South Carolina. The company plans to reopen an idle Tyson-owned facility in Columbia and convert it into a meat-cutting facility that will pro- duce retail ready, portioned pack- ages of sliced, fresh beef and pork, as well as ground beef, for grocery and club stores in the eastern U.S. Initially Tyson will invest ap- proximately $42 million to trans- form the facility into a meat por- tioning and packaging operation that is currently expected to begin production in May 2021.  Over the next three to five years the company plans to invest in ad- ditional improvements and pro- duction equipment at the facility with a total investment estimated at $55 million.  The new opera- tion will employ 330 people, more than double the number of team members who worked at the facil- ity when it closed in August 2020. Tyson Foods’ case-ready beef and pork business currently oper- ates plants in Iowa, Tennessee and Texas and plans to open a new fa- cility in Utah later this year. The operations are called case-ready, because the packaged meat pro- duced by the Tyson facilities are ready to be placed directly in the refrigerated meat case at grocery and club stores.