Dakota Provisions
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A dozen years after Dakota Provisions began operations in a state-of-the-art processing plant east of Huron, the company is now running at full speed at its newest facility in the West Industrial Park.
Called Dakota Provisions West, it is easing the need for double time, overtime and 10-hour shifts seven days a week that employees were working at the original plant.
“Our (first) plant was built to really handle about 1 to 1.2 million pounds of product and we have been running 1.4 to 1.5 million a week in our present facility,” said Ken Rutledge, president and chief executive officer.
Dakota Provisions West, which is initially employing 85 to 90 workers, is not a slaughter facility. It produces fully cooked, ready-to-eat product.
“This is raw material that is coming from our present facility. It gets there in tubs and gets processed at that (new) facility,” he said.
“We want to get to a point where we take about 80 percent of our raw material and turn it into fully cooked product,” Rutledge said.
When Dakota Provisions first started production in 2005, all of the de-boned meat was sold raw to other companies to make products out of them, he said.
In the past 12 years, the company has slowly moved more raw material into fully cooked material.
“We don’t want to sell raw material. We want to be selling ready to eat, fully cooked product,” he said.
Dakota Provisions, owned by 43 Hutterite colonies in the Dakotas and Minnesota, initially considered building its newest plant next to the adjacent facility east of Huron.
But customers recommended that the new plant be construct elsewhere from the original campus in the event of an emergency, like a fire, that could mean the loss of everything.
A 50,000-square-foot speculative building constructed by Greater Huron Development Corporation was purchased, and a 20,000-square-foot addition was added.
“The addition was for employee welfare, for lunch rooms, locker rooms, restrooms,” Rutledge said.
After the project was completed, weeks of testing and an inspection by the U.S. Department of Agriculture came next. As the tests were conducted, all of the turkey products that went through the process had to be tossed out.
“Last week (of February) was our first official week of full processing at the plant,” Rutledge said.
COURTESY PHOTO
Employees at Dakota Provisions West package fully-cooked turkey bundles in the new facility in the West Industrial Park.