In 2021, when the ribbon was cut marking the opening of Swift Prepared Foods’ fully cooked bacon plant in what is known as “The Magic City” of Moberly, Mo., it represented the faith JBS USA officials had in the growing demand for ready-to-eat (RTE) products in foodservice and retail segments. The $68-million investment in the 129,000-square-foot plant was also an opportunity for the company to execute a strategy to utilize its multi-state network of pork processing facilities to supply what was the first Swift plant built from the ground up. And in the four years since operations began, the number of jobs has grown from initial estimates of 200 to now over 400 as capacity has increased and work to add another processing line is just a few months away.
Swift Prepared Foods is the product of JBS SA’s acquisition of Plumrose USA in 2017. The company is currently rebranding under its new name: JBS Prepared Foods.
A dedicated RTE bacon processing plant was on the wish list of the JBS leadership team for some time, which fueled support for building the greenfield plant with a variety of potential retail customers to supply looming when the construction of the facility was announced in 2020. Fortunately, a leading chain of warehouse clubs stepped up to be the first customer and many other foodservice chains and retailers seeking a co-packing partner followed suit. The project also represented the first from-scratch plant built by JBS in the United States. It is the first and only RTE bacon plant for JBS.
Source: Sosland Publishing Co. / Joel CrewsA series of firsts
There were more questions than answers in the early days of developing and building the facility, including who would oversee the construction and then the day-to-day operations.
“My experience was in bacon, but not ready-to-eat bacon,” said Travis Miller, plant manager, admitting that the learning curve was steep when he started in the new role. “I started working in a bacon plant when I was 19 years old,” Miller said, but never in a ready-to-eat plant. “I had to learn a lot,” he said.
After working in Oscar Mayer’s bacon processing plant in Kirksville, Mo. for many years Miller joined JBS in 2019. He was hired back then as the plant manager overseeing the JBS bacon processing plant in Ottumwa, Iowa. About a year later the company announced plans to build its first-ever RTE bacon facility, a ground-up project that would be based in Moberly.
“I just threw my hat in the ring one day to the leadership and said, ‘If you can’t find anyone to run the plant, I’d be willing to go down there,’” Miller said.
He was hired for the position in April 2020 — just after ground had been broken — and relocated to his new assignment a few months later.
“I set up shop here in a construction trailer in November of 2020,” he said, recalling that workers were hustling to get the building enclosed ahead of winter. He was the first of the leadership team hired at the Moberly plant. Next, a human resource manager was hired, followed by a maintenance manager and then a quality assurance manager.
As those initial positions were filled, Miller said he and his team began solidifying partnerships for the logistics needed to get the plant up and running.
“That meant setting up for everything from frocks, vending, suppliers, etc.,” Miller said. “And then we started bringing on more people. I built a plan of when we were going to hire each position and bring people on board based on the timeline for the project.”
Much of the construction process and early start-up of operations at the plant was during the pandemic, which made for some unique challenges, including supply chain hiccups that made access to construction supplies and equipment difficult. Recruiting and hiring during that period was also a challenge.
“It was tough, probably for about the first year after production started,” Miller said.
Initially employees were hired beginning in April, many of whom were utilized to maintain and clean the building during the ramp-up process. By about June 2021, operations at the plant were underway and production of commercial products was a reality.
“We started out cleaning every day and then moved to every other day and eventually to incorporating a sanitation shift every third day to allow for a 24-7 schedule.”
The plant transitioned to 24-7 production in July 2021 and maintains that schedule today.
“We work four shifts of 12 [hours] per week,” Miller said. “We work a four-on and four- [days] off schedule,” he said.
Miller said employers utilizing the 24-7 schedule is fairly common among some of the other food manufacturers in the region. He said it can also be a valuable recruitment tool. Many applicants value the flexibility afforded by working the longer shifts and enjoying more days off each week. Once hired, employees work from either 4 a.m. to 4 p.m. or start at 4 p.m. and finish their shift at 4 a.m.
“We’re trying to convince them to work for us, and we can say ‘we’re going to give you four days off versus [somewhere else that] you might work five or six days [a week], or maybe even seven.”
During a given week, schedulers also add supplemental labor to work 8-hour shifts throughout the workweek to provide break relief. Those workers fill in gaps by starting to work just before break time for one shift and they finish their day after break times have been completed.
Every third day, the same workers who work on the processing lines also perform sanitation throughout the plant.
“They run the line until 7:30 or 8:00 at night and then they tear the equipment down,” Miller said. “They clean it, sanitize it, put the equipment back together and fire it back up before the next shift comes in.”
Source: Sosland Publishing Co. / Joel CrewsBits and strips
When walking into the linear oriented processing room, the bacon strips line stretches the length of the building on one side, and on the opposite side is the bacon bits processing line.
“Everything runs in a straight line,” Miller said. “We receive on the east end of the building, and we ship out on the west end. Some of the older plants you’ll see a lot of zigzagging, but this was well thought out as far as the layout.”
That same layout will be followed if or when the plant is expanded and add belly processing to its operations. The plant currently occupies 18 acres but the plot of land it sits on is about 40 acres, which someday could accommodate significant expansion to the south side of the facility.
“We know where that layout would be and how that would tie into the current plan while keeping everything segregated (between raw and cooked products),” Miller said.
A fourth packaging line is being added on the bacon strips side of the plant while the space for a second microwave line on the bits side of the plant is scheduled for installation in a matter of months, just adjacent to the current one, which stretches the length of the cooking room.
There are currently three packaging lines to accommodate a single cooking line for bacon bits, which was more than needed initially but was intentional as Miller’s team assumed the demand for those products would warrant additional packaging capacity sooner than later.
“We knew at some point that we were going to grow into it,” he said.
The Austin Co. was the general contractor that Miller and his team worked with to lead construction of the new plant. He said the positive relationship with Austin continues today, including ongoing meetings between plant officials and the builder to discuss issues at the plant and potential future projects.
AMTek Microwaves are critical parts of the core operation at the Moberly plant, and it will be the supplier of the new line on the bit processing side of the plant in the coming months.
“We have a very good relationship with Thurne, AMTek and all our vendors,” he said. “We can call them day or night if we’re having a problem or if there’s something we don’t understand, and they are always willing to help us out. They are not transactional, and some vendors can be, but these guys have been very good to us and have helped us out a bunch” he said noting that there are other microwave manufacturers supplying food processing plants, but JBS decided to stick with AMTek.
Establishing partnerships in the entire supplier community was an important part of the plant’s successful start-up.
“Building really good relationships with all of our equipment vendors, that was a big team effort,” Miller said, as the JBS team was working in uncharted territory with its first ready-to-eat bacon processing operation. “We kind of all learned together.”
Once the equipment choices were made, Miller said factory acceptance testing (FATs) were important steps in ensuring the equipment would operate as intended once installed and that it was safe, met sanitation requirements, etc. Because the plant was built during the pandemic, he said the overarching goal was maximizing production with the least amount of labor, and that mindset still prevails today.
“I tell everyone this is the most automated bacon plant I’ve ever been in or been a part of,” Miller said. “We have a lot more people who I would call ‘operators’ versus ‘labor.’”
Many of those operators are tasked with checking and double checking that production levels are maintained and identifying any hiccups in processing by notifying supervisors or maintenance personnel to resolve the issue as soon as possible. They also check the product counts in packages and boxes and ensure package integrity.
Miller said when the plant first started up about 65% of its products were for customers in the retail segment, but since then, demand has shifted and about 65% of its production is for foodservice customers.
“We’ve increased production especially in foodservice and the retail part, it’s stayed very consistent,” he said, adding that production for foodservice products is more labor intensive.
Miller said about 60% of the plant’s products are bits, even though the bits line operates with only a single microwave line.
“The bits line only has one [microwave] right now, but it can out produce, in terms of sheer volume and weight, the strip line, which has two microwave lines, so it certainly has the capability to continue growing.
“We started out with the initial two lines (one for strips and one for bits) and it took us awhile to get our feet under us.”
When ramping up, the mindset was to execute every pound of production correctly before adding more equipment and capacity.
“Our goal was ‘let’s get it right,’ whether we made one pound or 100,000 pounds we want to get every pound right and then continue to build off of that,” Miller said.
After the first two bacon strip lines were up and running, the second microwave strip line was added in 2022.
“We started that out slowly, ramped it up slowly and made sure that we were getting it right,” he said, adding that the same approach will be used on the microwave line that will be added on the bits side of the plant.
Bellies received at the Moberly plant are trimmed to uniform sizes for production of slices. (Source: Sosland Publishing Co. / Joel Crews)Belly focus
Raw material for the plant is shipped to Moberly from other JBS plants.
“We don’t process our bellies (from raw) here,” Miller said. “We get them from our sister plants,” which include facilities in Ottumwa and Council Bluffs, Iowa, Elkhart, Ind., and Manteca, Calif. Any additional bellies needed to meet demand come from a third-party processor. JBS also operates prepared foods plants in Swanton, Vt., Booneville, Miss. and a recently opened Italian meats plant in Columbia, Mo.
When bellies arrive in Moberly, they’ve already been injected, smoked and chilled. Bellies received at the plant are trimmed to uniform sizes for production of slices. The meat trimmed from those bellies is diverted and used for the production of bits. After trimming, bellies are made more uniform ahead of slicing by using Middleby Corp.’s Danfotech pressing technology. Slicing equipment for the plant’s strips is from Middleby’s Thurne brand.
“There’s not a lot of waste in the whole process,” Miller said.
Consistency in belly length, width and thickness as well as lean-to-fat ratios is a point of emphasis among the plants supplying the raw material. The amount of fat is especially important in a RTE plant because it is the fat that cooks out of the final product and affects the yield. He said one of the biggest differences in his current role versus his years at the Ottumwa bacon plant is maintaining targeted product yields in the ready-to-eat products.
“But bellies are fairly consistent from one plant to another,” Miller said, adding, “You’ll see seasonal changes, for example if the weather is especially hot or cold, leanness will increase versus when the weather is mild, when hogs will take on more fat.”
Customer conscious
During a morning shift in early January, the plant was processing strips for two different customers, with one line churning out precooked strips for a retailer, with 50 packages of 18 strips in each box. Meanwhile strips produced for a large QSR burger chain were packed in boxes of 1,350 strips containing 10 packages each for shipment to the company’s West Coast restaurants.
He said the specs for each customer, retail or foodservice varies.
“It’s all based on how it’s graded, what they’re looking for as far as slice thickness, the color, the formula; all of that is completely different from one product to the next.”
While the thickness of most strips is similar, Miller said the cook levels and formulas used for injecting and smoking the bellies used to make those strips are vastly different based on the customers’ requests. When it comes to working with a QSR chain, Miller said a successful partnership is based on the plant operators understanding the needs of a high-volume customer and realizing there is not a one-size-fits-all solution. The facility has one line dedicated to producing strips for a specific QSR, and production for other co-packing partners depends on those customers’ needs, which vary.
“With this plant especially and its focus [on RTE bacon] it’s more about what does the customer want, what capability does the plant have and then bringing them in and working with them to deliver exactly what they’re looking for,” Miller said.
He added that typically customers and plant operators will meet at the facility and stand side-by-side, running product to achieve the end-product goal.
“We’ll try multiple iterations to get them just what they want,” he said.
The level of shelf life of products produced at the Moberly plant ranges from a minimum of 180 days to a maximum of 365 days. The determining factor of where a product falls in that range is the level that it is cooked. The majority of the bits produced fall in the 365-day category.
“Being below a .92 water activity means that the product is ready to eat; being below a .85 water activity means that it is shelf stable,” Miller said.
The cook time in the microwaves for strips is about 90 seconds compared to cooking bits, which requires about 20 minutes. The strip microwave lines on the slice side of the operation are set up to be mirror images of each other and plans are for the additional line on the bits side to be the same orientation to ensure access for maintenance and sanitation.
Not including maintenance staff and office and administrative personnel, there are about 70 people working in the processing plant during any given shift, and most of those workers are on the cooked/RTE part of the operation.
About 80%-85% of products from Moberly are for private label customers and just a fraction of the plant’s production are sold as Swift branded products to foodservice customers, including restaurant and hotel chains.
Boxes are erected on the second floor above the processing area and are conveyed to spiraling stainless steel chutes that use gravity to deliver boxes to the packaging area below.
Strips are packaged using technology from CP Packaging directly from the cooking line and robotically boxed with automation technology from JLS.
After thick piles of bacon bits come out of the microwave, they are chilled using nitrogen-injected chill screws that move the products to an enclosed tubular conveying system from Cablevey that moves the cooled bits portions overhead to Multipond weighers that overlook the processing floor.
“It’s a lot cleaner and neater,” Miller said of the conveying system used by Moberly versus the open systems used by many traditional plants for bit processing. The products are then packaged using vertical form-fill-seal technology.
The bits coming out of the microwave are between 180°F and 200°F and after chilling and the product X-ray process, they are between 10°F and 20°F. Depending on the customer and application, the size of the bits vary between ¼ inch to ¾ inch.
When the products come out of the microwaves there is some residual grease produced by the cooking process. But it isn’t visible, and it does not cling to the products after chilling. Miller and his team worked with Solution Technologies to design a customized system to recover and filter grease from the plant as part of its sustainability commitment.
“We take our grease and refine it, and we sell it to a company that makes biodiesel,” Miller said.
Bits for retail customers are portioned for packaging by a Multipond scale. Two dedicated Premier Tech robotic palletizers handle finished products to get them ready for shipping, one for the strip side of production and a second one for bit products. This automation, Miller said, replaces a total of about four workers who would otherwise be hand palletizing.
After products are packaged, boxed and palletized, they are placed in cold storage where about 1,400 pallet spaces are available at the plant. Typically, enough finished product is stored to accommodate three to four days of shipments, according to Miller.
The meat trimmed from the bellies is diverted and used for the production of bacon bits. (Source: Sosland Publishing Co. / Joel Crews)Ready to grow
When the additional line is added in July 2025, bit capacity will add approximately 8% of products per day. Plans for executing the addition of the new line began in late 2024, when the equipment was ordered. In the coming months, work to erect a temporary wall will begin to isolate the construction area to ensure the rest of the plant’s production doesn’t slow down.
“We’ll start bringing in equipment and setting it probably in May,” Miller said. “They’ll work within the confines of the construction walls and once they get most of the rough work done and get the equipment set, we’ll take down the walls, clean the equipment really well and then begin to do the fine tuning and get ready for full production.”
Looking ahead, Miller said there appears to be no ceiling for bacon demand of all kinds.
“We’re just taking it one year at a time. I think this plant will grow to be very big in ready-to-eat bacon,” he said, and meeting demand will require continued investment in human resources.
“We’ve got really good people who work well together and make the plant run great. I’ve been fortunate that I’ve hired a very good team around me. When I talk to our new hires, I talk a lot about us being a family and the family atmosphere is one thing that always helps with executing a plan.”
