Simply Essentials: ‘We can succeed’ in poultry plant

Representatives outline operations at council workshop

By Kate Hayden

khayden@charlescitypress.com

When the Charles City Council met with two Simply Essentials representatives and an affiliate during Wednesday’s council workshop, Simply Essentials Vice President Jeff Muchow wanted to address one pressing question.

“Why is Simply Essentials going to succeed when the two different previous companies failed? We hear that every day,” Muchow told the council.

Muchow, Human Resources Manager Will Blythe and George Peichel, CEO of Prairie’s Best presented for nearly an hour at the workshop, trying to address everything from employment wages at the poultry plant, to traffic management to recruiting chicken growers among Iowa farmers from which Simply Essentials can source birds.

The plant has low startup costs, Muchow said, by funding costs through equity instead of relying mostly on debt, and by the existing facility itself.

Under the initial opening, Simply Essentials expects to process 60,000 birds a day on a single shift, or about 144 birds a minute, Muchow told the council. Over a year, that will come out to 3 million chickens, he added.

The plant’s renovations will include a focus on sustainability, Muchow said, with processing strategies that cut water usage down from five gallons per bird to four and a half gallons. After meeting with city officials, Simply Essentials is investing $5-600,000 within the city’s wastewater treatment plant to help reduce solids discharged, he said.

“We want to work closely with the city so that we don’t overburden the plant,” Muchow said.

The poultry plant’s starting wage will begin at roughly $12.50 an hour, Blythe told the council, which could be raised up to $14.50 after four weeks. The company is currently working on the benefit and 401(k) packages that will be offered. The plant’s payroll will be between $22-23 million, Muchow added.

Experienced management and supervisory staff will be brought in to help the plant begin running, but the long-term goal is to begin promoting workers from within local workers who begin the hourly jobs, Blythe said.

“We’re trying to do it the right way so we can have good people come and stay with us for a long period of time,” Blythe said.

Prairie’s Best is searching for between 35 to 38 grower sites, Peichel told the council, typically two houses per site to keep the load manageable for farmers and stay within environmental regulations. The company is looking for sites within a 75-mile radius of the Sinclair Elevator in Parkersburg, 46 miles south of Charles City. Eggs will be transported in from Arkansas.

“Our site checklist asks people to keep these sites three quarters of a mile or more away from residential areas. I don’t want them right next to town,” Peichel said. “I prefer that farmers put the barns closer to their house than their neighbor’s house. We want to be responsible when it comes to that.”

The cost will be about $1.1 million for farmers to set up, Peichel noted. Farmers will enter a 15-year contract with Prairie’s Best.