Tyson Foods to Expand Thomas E. Wilson Products

Tyson Foods Inc. announced on May 21 that the Springdale company had completed its purchase of a bacon processing facility in Omaha, Neb., from Millard Refrigerated Services.

Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

The processing plant has annual sales of about $160 million.

It has been used primarily in co-packing smoked bacon for private brands for retail and foodservice. The plant will operate within Tyson’s Refrigerated Processed Meats Division. The plant’s current management and production team structure will remain in place.

The facility was refurbished within the last decade into a state-of-the-art bacon processing plant. It is about 329,000 SF in size, which includes the processing area and cold storage capacity.

Tyson purchased IBP Inc., the nation’s largest producer of beef, in late September. With that transaction, Tyson controls 27 percent of the nation’s beef market, 23 percent of the chicken market and 18 percent of the pork market. Tyson chairman, CEO and president John Tyson has said he hoped to get the pork market up to about 20 percent, a figure he believes would benefit both Tyson Foods and its customers.

The processing plant employs about 600 people. Tyson Foods employs about 120,000 people at 131 facilities in the United States.