Excel Selects Contractor to Expand Kill Floor at Beef Plant in Texas

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Researched by Industrialinfo.com (Industrial Information Resources, Incorporated; Houston, Texas). Excel Corporation (Wichita, Kansas), a wholly owned subsidiary of privately held Cargill Incorporated (Wayzata, Minnesota), has selected a general contractor to expand the kill floor at Excel's beef processing plant in the Texas Panhandle.

Excel plans to invest roughly $12 million in the project that will add a 23,000 two-story kill building and the installation of kill floor equipment plus carcass handling and cooling systems to increase kill capacity at the plant from 4,300 head per day to over 5,000 head per day of cattle.

Schmeeckle Brothers Construction (Greeley, Colorado) was awarded the project and has been on-site pouring the foundation and erecting the pre-cast concrete walls since September. The new kill floor should be completed and fully operational by April of 2003.

The new highly automated system will not create an abundance of new job openings at the plant.

The plant, located in Plainview, Texas, is about 70 miles south of Amarillo and employs over 1,900 people at the site that produces beef cuts and fabricated beef products.

Excel Corporation is a recognized leader in the beef and pork packing industry and offers an extensive line of premium quality beef and pork product programs to recognized retail and commercial food service markets around the world. The company operates seventeen beef, pork, further processing, and case ready meat plants in the U.S. and Canada.