Production is beginning this week at the Lopez Foods plant in Cherokee, Iowa. The facility was formerly operated by Tyson Foods.
John Patrick Lopez, president and CEO of Lopez Foods, told the Chronicle Times, that all inspections from the U.S. Department of Agriculture have been passed, and it is set to operate with one line and about 50 employees. Plans are to ramp up production, eventually employing as many as 400 people.
Lopez Foods intends to process poultry, pork and beef at the new facility.
The Cherokee plant, which was obtained by Tyson Foods through its 2001 acquisition of IBP Inc., closed in 2014, at the same time it announced it would close Tyson Prepared Foods plants in Buffalo, New York, and Santa Teresa, New Mexico. Tyson said at the time that the decision to close the plants was due to a combination of factors, which included changing product needs, the age of the Cherokee facility and prohibitive cost of renovating it. It further stated that the distance of the Buffalo and Santa Teresa plants from their raw material supply bases was also a factor in the closure of those two plants.
Tyson sold the facility to Iowa Food Group (IFG) in January 2019, but IFG abruptly closed the plant in April.
IFG in July then sold the plant to Lopez Foods, which originated as a spinoff of Wilson Foods, which actually built the plant in Cherokee.
Since purchasing the property, Lopez Foods renovated and acquired equipment for the 300,000-square-foot facility. It’s investment in the renovations and equipment totaled around $75 million.
Lopez Foods, according to its website, is now recognized among the top meat companies in the United States and is an industry leader in supplying a variety of protein products to the largest restaurant chains and retailers in the world.
