Postville, cattle industry rebounding with new plant

Postville and northeast Iowa are seeing the return of good-paying jobs and rebounding cattle prices, along with the hope for recovery and rebirth thanks to the continued expansion of Agri Star Meat and Poultry, officials said today.

Hershey Friedman, Agri Star chief executive officer, told a Statehouse news conference his company has completed the initial startup of its beef operations and plans to move toward full capacity of its state-of-the-art kosher beef line in hopes of eventually becoming the world's largest kosher meat plant.

Friedman, the Canadian businessman who bought the troubled Agriprocessors Inc. plant last August and invested $7.5 million to modernize and upgrade the facility, said Agri Star now has grown to 560 employees and is producing a full line of chicken, turkey and beef products for the retail, foodservice and deli markets.

“We're proud of our progress at Agri Star,” Friedman said. “It has been a journey, but we've made real progress.”

Currently, the Postville facility slaughters between 85 and 90 head of cattle per day, he said. Friedman said he expected production to increase to 150 head per day within the next month and grow to 500 head a day in a year's time.

“We are on our way,” he said. “We made commitments, we're honoring those commitments.”

Friedman's company took over the troubled Agriprocessors plant, which was the nation's largest kosher slaughterhouse prior to a May 2008 immigration raid in which nearly 400 employees were arrested or detained. The raid resulted in fraud and other criminal charges that included the conviction of Sholom Rubashkin, one of the top managers for the previous Agriprocessors owners.

Friedman said he overhauled the company's human resources department with an eye toward ensuring that all employees are legal. Agri Star used a government-based verification system to check credentials of applicants.

The Agri Star executive said current wages range from $8-$9 per hour for low-end production jobs to $12-$18 an hour in the beef processing operation. He said his goal is to increase production to 1,000 cattle per day and grow the workforce to as many as 1,000 employees.

Bruce Berven, executive vice president of the Iowa Cattlemen's Association, said Iowa's beef industry took a $24 million hit when Agriprocessors stopped buying cattle, producing “a void” in northeast Iowa that forced producers to take animals to Denison or out-of-state facilities and sell in a less competitive market.

Berven said prices paid for Iowa cattle have rebounded since Agri Star resumed beef production and he was optimistic the company's buying power would provide a significant, positive economic boost for Iowa's 10,000 beef producers, Postville, northeast Iowa and the state in general.

Postville Mayor Leigh Rekow said his community remains positive and is beginning to see the benefits of renewed employment opportunities. He noted that there are 35 more high school students and houses that stood empty are being repopulated.

“We're doing well,” Rekow said, although he noted there remains challenges in a small town that went through considerable upheaval due to Agriprocessors' demise. “We will survive, we will get back to where we were and maybe better,” he said.