Pure Prairie Farms in Charles City expects to begin production next month

By Bob Steenson, bsteenson@charlescitypress.com

Pure Prairie Farms’ first group of chicks has been hatched for chicken meat production that is expected to begin next month, and employment is ramping up to staff that first shift, the company said.

“We are still on target to begin production this year,” said Bob Wolfe, chief operating officer for the company that purchased the former Simply Essentials plant in Charles City. “While we have publicly communicated the fourth quarter of 2022, we are now confident that we will start-up in the second half of November.”

Employment is increasing daily in anticipation of that start-up date, Wolfe said.

“We can tell you our short-term employment goal is in the 65-75 range,” he said. “Readers interested in a position with Pure Prairie Farms should visit us at pureprairiefarms.com for more information.”

The company was recently awarded a major training agreement with North Iowa Area Community College that could provide more than $2.3 million in employee training funding for up to 224 positions.

The NIACC board of directors approved final agreements the end of September to sell $6.75 million in bonds through the Iowa Industrial New Jobs Training Program to help with training costs for seven north Iowa companies including Pure Prairie Farms.

The bonds are repaid by having the companies that receive the training divert 1.5% or 3% of their gross payroll from the state withholding taxes generated by the new positions, according to the Iowa Economic Development Authority.

“Training is available at essentially no cost since bonds are retired with dollars that otherwise would have been paid to the state as withholding taxes,” the IEDA says. “Participants may be eligible for reimbursement up to 50% of the approved award amount for on-the-job training.”

To qualify the business must be located in Iowa, be engaged in “commerce for the purpose of manufacturing, processing, assembling products, warehousing, wholesaling, or conducting research and development,” and the employees must be in newly created positions, pay Iowa income tax and must be in positions that did not exist six months prior to the date the business and the community college agreed on the training project.

Anita Janssen, vice president of strategic initiatives for Pure Prairie Farms, said the NIACC training funds will begin being available to the company later this month.

“We identified three main areas of focus for these funds as part of the plan,” she said. Those areas are on-the-job training; professionally developed, formalized training programs; and equipment such as laptops and chairs for a training room used in training.

“By-and-large we plan to use the funds to focus on specific trade skills, skill development and training that will help prepare our team members for opportunities to grow within the company,” Janssen said. “A few examples include paid training for welding, maintenance, and English as a Second Language, which are all transferable skills outside of Pure Prairie Farms.”

Janssen said the company has three years to use the funds, and it doesn’t anticipate having a problem meeting that timetable.

“We really can’t think of any obstacles preventing us from utilizing these funds in meaningful, relevant and strategic ways in which we all benefit,” she said.

The grant is very significant to the company and its goal of becoming the regional “employer of choice,” she said.

“Being able to offer robust, relevant training and build skills are key steps to creating a highly engaged and happy team at Pure Prairie Farms,” she said. “This grant allows us to meet these goals faster than we could otherwise meet them.”

Janssen said a planned plant expansion hasn’t started yet, but the engineering for it will start yet this year.

Since shortly after Pure Prairie Farms took over the Charles City facility, company officials have said one key to the success of the new company will be expanding the plant to create a product distribution area and to allow the company to create better employee amenities such as break room and locker areas.

As part of the expansion proposal, the city of Charles City agreed to close a block of North Main Street in front of the plant and reroute traffic. The City Council is currently considering a three-year lease-to-purchase agreement with Pure Prairie Farms for that part of the street for a total of $100,000.

The NIACC training program that Pure Prairie Farms qualified for will potentially create a total of more than 500 new jobs at seven companies with the $6.75 million in bonds being sold.

The seven companies that have agreements approved with NIACC are:

• Pure Prairie Farms, Charles City, 224 jobs, net training fund $2,337,507.

• Stellar Industries Inc., Garner, 119 jobs, net training fund $821,305.

• UpTower Inc., Saint Ansgar, 92 jobs, net training fund $851,047.

• Centro Inc., Hampton, 40 jobs, net training fund $285,936.

• Rahr Bushel Boy LLC, Mason City, 16 positions, net training fund $80,4414.

• Plas-Tech, Garner, 10 positions, net training fund $79,765.

• Valent Biosciences, Osage, 10 positions, net training fund $106,803.