In June, there was talk of a $1.1 billion beef facility named Western Legacy Development Corporation in South Dakota. The project — which is slated to be the largest in the U.S. and spearheaded by Megan Kingsbury — may now be moving to Wyoming.
Mayor Patrick Collins included a statement on the potential, new Cheyenne plant in his newsletter, The Mayor’s Minute, stating:
“I attended a lunch with a prospective new industrial business looking at Cheyenne. They would like to build one of the largest meat packing plants in North America in the Swan Ranch Business Park. It is early in the process, but the $1.1 billion facility would be built to prevent the smells normally attributed with this kind of facility and could provide up to 2,500 jobs. I will keep you updated as the project moves through the process.”
The proposed facility could cover a million square feet and process 8,000 head per day — 1,000 more than the industry’s current top processor — a Tyson plant in South Dakota.
»Related: Small meat processors find themselves packed with demand
While still in the planning phases, groundbreaking is planned for 2023 with the first line ready to go in early 2026.
“We have the technological experts to build a high-tech facility never seen before in the United States,” Kingsbury said in a press release.
Kingsbury says that the facility will focus on supporting American meat. In August, DRGnews reported Kingsbury describing the plant’s technological advances as aligning with current policy conversations.
“With the technology, robotics, and artificial intelligence that is in this facility we will check the boxes of transparency, traceability, and repeatability that many of the cattle producer organizations have long advocated for in some format and that our friends at Fortune 100 companies are demanding for their consumers,” Kingsbury said.
Kingsbury is also aiming to make this new facility carbon neutral and mostly odor free thanks to the harvesting of methane gas to produce energy to help power the facility. The new technologies should also help to process cattle more easily and efficiently.
Despite tight U.S. beef supplies, President Joe Biden announced earlier this year $1 billion set aside to help independent processing facilities. Since this time, other facilities across the country have been announced.
»Related: Tyson Foods is planning a $200M Amarillo expansion
