Vital Farms plans largest egg-processing plant in PIC West

On paper it may only be 11 acres, but for an Austin, Texas-based company and the development of Partnership Industrial Center West, a plot of land at the corner of North Alliance Avenue and West Production Street has big implications.

It’s the site of Vital Farms’ first full-scale processing plant for pasture-raised eggs and its first operations in Missouri.

Previously working from smaller facilities and with other companies to co-pack eggs, such as Mid-States Specialty Eggs in Sedalia, Vital Farms President and Chief Operating Officer Russell Diez-Canseco said the Springfield plant would be its largest to bring egg processing, grading, quality inspection, packing and transportation operations under one roof.

Company executives and area economic development officials broke ground on the 82,140-square-foot plant Sept. 28. The build-out is expected to take about a year.

But it’s not the company’s first look at southwest Missouri.

In December 2015, the Austin American-Statesman reported Vital Farms had selected a site in Joplin for a 65,000-square-foot, $11.5 million plant. Diez-Canseco said the company eventually chose Springfield after meeting with members of the local business community in January. Vital Farms also hired a roster of local companies to build the Springfield plant, including Buxton Kubik Dodd Creative as project architect and Branco Enterprises Inc. as on-site construction manager.

“What really caught my attention was showing up on day one in a meeting and having the chamber there, the city utility there, the city there – first meeting, not three months in,” Diez-Canseco said during the ceremony, also pointing to the site’s location next to Springfield-Branson National Airport as a deciding factor.

 “At last count, I think you have 44 flights in and out every day. That was a big deal for us,” he added. “We’re in Austin, it’s not a hub airport and it’s not easy to get around, but we have at least four options every day to get from our headquarters to Springfield.”

Growing out west
Vital Farms’ groundbreaking comes roughly two months after industrial washer parts manufacturer JRI Holdings Inc. announced plans to lease a 66,00-square-foot PIC West building owned by Rich Kramer Construction.

Company and chamber officials declined to disclose the purchase price of Vital Farms’ acreage. Based on the list price of $65,000 per acre at PIC West, the deal approached $700,000. City officials say the price is negotiable, and capital investment in the park has reached nearly $100 million.

Springfield Area Chamber of Commerce Manager of Business Development Justin Coyan said Vital Farms’ purchase puts the total occupied land past the halfway mark of development at 177 acres, and Vital Farms has the first rights to buy another 6 acres adjacent to the site. It’s the park’s 11th tenant.

“In today’s economy and market, companies are most often looking for development-ready land, so when we talk about speed to market it’s having the assets in our region that companies are looking for,” Coyan said. “It’s a driving factor for companies’ decision making most of the time. In this case, having that land that fit their geographic search helped us win the project and Vital Farms make their decision.”

Diez-Canseco said the company plans to employ 50 full-time positions within the plant’s first year of operations. About 40 jobs are related to production and the remaining 10 relegated to management and analytical support.

The plant culminates two years of planning by the 9-year-old company privately owned by Matt O’Hayer.

“It’s certainly not a decision we’ve taken lightly, and it’s by far the biggest investment that we’ve ever made,” Diez-Canseco said, declining to disclose Vital Farms’ planned investment and annual revenues. “We believe it will position us well for growth in the coming years. It will take a few years before we come anywhere near [building] another plant of this size and capacity.”

Going to market
The path to the 350-acre PIC West involved site evaluations in markets close to the southern United States where over 100 farm suppliers are located. Diez-Canseco said other possibilities included the company’s native Texas, as well as Oklahoma and Arkansas.

“The first thing we had to think about was do we want a plant near our farms or one or more near our customers?” Diez-Canseco said. “We decided we wanted one near our farms, which cuts down the number of days it takes from the egg being laid to it being on the shelves at the grocery store.”

Though Vital Farms currently is well supplied – Diez-Canseco said there’s an industrywide glut of eggs – as the company’s pool of farmers needs to grow, it will look first to the Springfield area. Currently, Vital Farms’ products are sold at over 6,000 retailers including The Fresh Market, Whole Foods Market, Target and Kroger brand stores in 49 states.

And shoppers are hungry for specialty foods, which in the egg sector includes those marketed as organic or raised cage-free. The 2016 State of the Specialty Food Industry report by the Specialty Foods Association and London-based market research firm Mintel found specialty food sales hit $120.5 billion in 2015.

Eggs were listed as the second-fastest growing food with a 218 percent sales increase 2013-15.

“I think people want to know what they’re getting,” Diez-Canseco said of the trend. “They want transparency from their food suppliers, and I believe animal welfare is becoming more important to a growing number of people in this country. We’re seeing increasingly a specialty egg market that’s growing much faster than the overall egg industry.”