If the company is to be sold, who will buy it? As the…
…Des Moines Register reports, Agriprocessors is too small to be anything but a kosher facility:
…Meat industry observers said the plant probably is too small and old to compete in the nonkosher meat industry, which is dominated by a few giant companies. But several said another kosher company could come in and reopen the facility.
Professor Joe Regenstein, a kosher food expert at Cornell University in New York, said he'd heard of at least one company interested in buying the plant. He said Agriprocessors probably would have been worth more before it became engulfed in scandal. Now, he said, a new owner might not want to use Agriprocessors' brand names to market meat in grocery stores. "The brand equity is going down and down," he said.
Regenstein said state and local authorities should set ground rules before helping bring in a new owner. "It shouldn't be just to have another kosher operator come in, but to have a plant we can be proud of," he said.
David Blake, general manager for the Local Pride meatpacking facility in Gordon, Neb., which Agriprocessors operates, declined to comment directly on the impact of the foreclosure lawsuit on that facility.
He acknowledged that the plant had been closed for the month of October. "We were closed for the kosher holidays, but that is not unusual," Blake said. He said that plant employs fewer than 100, but has been operated successfully enough to have other groups interested in purchasing it.
"I have been here for two years or so, and we have done a pretty good job," Blake said. "There are groups that are interested in purchasing it now and picking up where we left off." He said he would also be interested in becoming one of the owners.
Avram Lyon, a union consultant for the United Food and Commercial Workers, said he'd heard reports that potential buyers have visited the plant. Agriprocessors apparently is still butchering a few chickens and turkeys, he said, but has stopped its cattle operation.
"They're operating, but it's a skeleton crew," Lyon said.…
The truth is, Agriprocessors could be a niche facility producing grass fed beef. Or it could be purchased by Japanese investors (at least one has already looked at the plant, I'm told) to supply beef for the Japanese market.
Most likely, if Agriprocessors is sold, it will be run as a kosher processor, either for Hebrew National (which might start a glatt line of products, including fresh beef) or Empire, which is now entering the kosher beef business.
But the plant could just as well be sold to a new group wanting to enter the kosher meat business or to a smaller existing company like Solomon's.
Time will tell.