Stampede Meat celebrated the grand opening of its New Mexico production plant with a ribbon-cutting ceremony on Thursday and said the expansion project would support $300 million to $400 million in additional revenue growth when fully utilized.
The fully renovated former Tyson Foods facility in Sunland Park, N.M., gives Bridgeview, Ill.-based Stampede the ability to ramp up a proprietary cooking process to meet immediate customer commitments, Chief Executive Brock Furlong said.
“The facility will be deploying at scale a proprietary 360-degree fire-seared, sous vide process, which we developed over the last three years. This new capability is not only immediately needed to facilitate current customer contracts and commitments heading into 2019, but it will also open up many new customer doors,” Furlong said in a press release.
The $36 million expansion will increase Stampede’s existing 285,000 square footage and 190-million-pound capacity by more than half. A third and final phase of the project that will begin in early 2019 will include a clean room for post-cook lethality processing, Stampede said.
The company plans to move to two shifts of production as soon as mid-January. Over the next five years, the expansion is projected to create 1,295 new food processing and manufacturing jobs.
Stampede Meat also operates facilities in Oak Lawn, Bedford Park and Hodgkins, near its headquarters. These facilities currently produce a wide variety of menu offerings beyond beef, including chicken, turkey, pork, vegetables, soups, prepared meals and alternative proteins.