Processing activities have resumed at Perdue Farms’ poultry plant in Rockingham, North Carolina, after a small fire occurred there on May 13.
“The plant was not running at that time. We did have some maintenance people in the plant who noticed that, but we were not processing during the time when that small fire occurred,” explained Joe Forsthoffer, spokesman for Perdue Farms.
The fire was contained to a “limited portion of the production area,” Forsthoffer said, and no structural damage resulted.
Some processing equipment was damaged as a result of the fire, but Forsthoffer said the company was able to work with its vendors and also its over plants to quickly bring in the needed replacement equipment. Additional maintenance and sanitation workers were brought in to get things cleaned up and back to order, he added.
Operations had been halted after the fire, but partial production began on May 15. Forsthoffer, speaking on May 16, said full production was expected to resume later that evening.
The Rockingham facility processes some consumer products, as well as serves as a raw material supplier for some of Perdue’s further processing plants. Forsthoffer said the company was able to shift some production to other plants so the fire’s impact on Perdue customers would be minimal.
Crews from the Rockingham, Hamlet, Cordova and Northside fire departments responded to the fire.
Perdue Farms, along with North Carolina state officials, in 2016 announced that it was expanding the Rockingham plant. The expansion, valued at $10.9 million, was to include the addition of new production positions and enable the company to hire 30 more people.
Perdue Farms is the fourth largest broiler company in the United States, having processed 62.86 million pounds of ready-to-cook chicken on a weekly basis in 2017. It is also the seventh largest turkey company in the United States.
