JBS Breaks Ground on Sausage Plant in Perry

By Cami Koons

PERRY — JBS USA broke ground Tuesday on its “state of the art” sausage making facility and celebrated with city and state leaders a “turning point” for the Perry community. 

The roughly 110-acre site on the southeast side of Perry is slated to be operational a year from now and officials said the plant would add a second shift about six months later, to hit the full 500-job metric. 

JBS officials said Tuesday a portion of the sausage made at the facility will go to JBS’ recently purchased facility in Ankeny that will make ready-to-eat sausage and bacon. 

Rick Foster, president of JBS USA’s prepared foods division, said the Ankeny facility is scheduled to open partially in July and fully open when the Perry plant becomes operational. 

JBS announced plans for the plant in May and was awarded a $12 million tax benefit from the Iowa Economic Development Authority board because nearly 60 jobs at the facility will offer salaries of $30 or higher per hour.

Iowa Secretary of Agriculture Mike Naig welcomed JBS to the site and said the plant would add “tremendous value” to Iowa’s pork industry. He said the value-added products made at the facility are part of Iowa’s story of “long-term strength” in the agriculture industry. 

“From an Iowa farm to JBS Perry to a plate here in Iowa or around the world, this is how it works,” Naig said. “This is how Iowa communities grow even stronger because of investments like this.” 

The groundbreaking occurred a little more than a year after a Tyson Foods pork processing facility, which employed nearly 1,300 people, closed in town. 

Perry Mayor Dirk Cavanaugh said the plant and its associated benefits will bring jobs back to the community and help to boost the existing businesses in town. 

“JBS’ investment will bring a lot of opportunities to town, it will bring good jobs back to Perry so our residents don’t have a commute to work,” Cavanaugh said. “It will help us recover from last year’s setbacks.” 

Wesley Batista-Filho, CEO of JBS USA, said the company decided to build the facility from scratch, rather than converting an existing company, with the hopes that the factory will “be here 100 years from now.” 

Batista-Filho said the facility will produce 130 million pounds of sausage annually. According to Foster, that equates to roughly 200 million pounds of pork processed annually. 

Batista-Filho said the Ankeny facility, which the company announced in August it planned to buy, will help to “ramp up” the production in Perry. 

U.S. Rep. Zach Nunn attended the groundbreaking and said the JBS facilities in Iowa are an example of “what good pork spending looks like.” 

“We’re going to keep doing the same thing right in Washington, D.C. to make Perry’s success a model that can be replicated across the country,” Nunn said. 

In July, around 200 employees of a JBS plant in Ottumwa were terminated and had their visas revoked following steps from the Trump administration to change protected status for Haitian, Nicaraguan and Venezuelan nationals. JBS officials said Tuesday they did not have an update on the situation in Ottumwa. 

Foster said he is not concerned about the ability to hire workers for the Perry facility, even with ongoing immigration policy changes. 

“We’ve got very good feedback from the Perry community about the workforce and they’re kind of hungry for these jobs to come to the market, so we feel very strongly about the workforce that we’ll be able to put together,” Foster said. 

Rachel Wacker, the executive director for the Greater Dallas County Development Alliance, said the plant opening was “more than an economic milestone” but a “statement” that Perry is a town worth investing in. 

Wacker said through the hardship of shuttered plants, which account for a significant portion of the city’s jobs, the community has remained strong. 

“Today is a turning point, and today we plant the first stake in a sustainable future full of promise,” Wacker said. 

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