Smithfield Foods, a subsidiary of WH Group, ranks third among the largest swine processors in the world, so it’s fitting that the company would operate a plant that is up to the task of mass production of pork products. Tar Heel is that facility, and it is recognized as the largest pork processing plant in the world. Erected in 1992 in Tar Heel, NC, the facility spans 985,000 square feet, and each building on the more than 880 acres is strategically situated based on its function in the production system.

The latest in processing technology is utilized at Tar Heel, from robotic carcass splitters to slicers, vision systems and conveyors. Daily slaughter capacity at the mammoth facility is 35,000 head; annual pounds produced totals 2.08 billion lbs. That daily production is turned into hams, bone-in and boneless loins, butts, picnics, marinated filets and tenders. Some items are shipped out fresh, while some production is directed to Smithfield’s packaged meats facility in Kinston, NC, and other Smithfield facilities for further processing.

In addition to fresh pork, byproducts are harvested for heparin production by Smithfield BioScience. Smithfield is the No. 1 supplier of Heparin Sodium, an anticoagulant used in kidney dialysis, in the United States.

The company also is the only US-based vertically integrated supply chain manufacturing Heparin API, which is used in cardiac surgery, blood transfusions, COVID treatments, medical device coatings and other applications.

Changing with the times

Keller Watts, chief business officer at Smithfield, said much of the company’s progression is focused on more value-added products and automation to drive consistency and enhance worker safety by taking the more difficult jobs out of the hands of employees.

“Tar Heel’s demands have changed with our demands,” Watts said. “When we created that facility years ago, in the early to mid-90s, it was a different world. We’re automating where we can; that was certainly accelerated by COVID. But there are some tough jobs in all of our facilities and Tar Heel is certainly no different. And so, jobs that are monotonous we’re certainly trying to automate and bring the latest technology into those plants. Not only does that allow us to repurpose some of our workforce to focus on other areas, but it also provides more consistency in our business.

“When we look at our business, in real simple terms, where it’s evolved to is more value-added parts of the business,” he said. “We always say the more value you can add to product the better. With labor constraints, with our customers, the more we can pull some of that in-house the better. A great example of that would be things like case ready. There’s not as many butchers out there as there used to be, and there’s less of them every day. So, wherever we can provide an opportunity to go one step closer and take that kind of labor intensity away from the stores and do it in house as a one-stop shop, we’re always looking to do that.”

Andrea Tucker, complex manager of Tar Heel and MEAT+POULTRY’s 2023 Operations Executive of the Year, concurred that opportunities to automate production processes are always top-of-mind at the facility.

“In one of our processes on a belly, you’re pulling a rib off of it,” she said. “It used to be a very manual process by taking a rib saw and tugging it toward you to pull that rib out of that belly. You could only go so deep on that because you could cause other defects. With bellies being different sizes, it was hard to gauge where that (saw) should actually go.

“So, we redeployed that workforce somewhere else and brought in a robotic arm that now is able to capture different views of that belly and understands when we tell it we want ‘X’ sort of rib, it knows how deep to go down and pull it. It knows exactly where to pull and how much it should leave on the belly.”

Tucker credited Frontmatec and Jarvis with Tar Heel’s successful implementation of automation, saying “35,000 pigs is a lot to harvest and cut up every day, and those two equipment companies really help make that happen.”

Smithfield also has embraced controlled atmosphere stunning (CAS) at Tar Heel given the sheer number of pigs slaughtered daily at the facility.

Upon arriving at the plant, truckloads of animals waiting to be unloaded get parked next to giant industrial fans stacked the length and height of the trailers to keep the animals cool. Next, the pigs are unloaded and separated into smaller groups in the lairage to rest and cool down.

The animals are later guided into a Butina CO₂ Backloader anesthetizer stunning system in small groups. A motorized gondola system takes the pigs down to a cement pit where the pigs are exposed to CO₂ gas and rendered insensible. It takes roughly 30 seconds to render the pigs unconscious using CAS. Each pig is then hoisted onto a conveyor and transferred to sticking.

Watts said the company’s vendors are critical to Smithfield’s success, not just in equipment but across the board.

“Those that understand our business are pretty forward thinking and they’re really helping us drive some of these initiatives, especially around automation,” he said. “The vendor partners that understand us and aren’t just being transactional, they win with us.”

The latest in processing technology is utilized at Tar Heel, from robotic carcass splitters to slicers, vision systems and conveyors. (Source: Jason Arthurs)

Getting big and lean

Tar Heel is the key cog in Smithfield Foods’ vertically integrated business that is modeled after the chicken industry. The idea to transition Smithfield to a vertically integrated business started with Joseph W. Luter III, who served as president of the company from 1966 to 1969 and chief executive officer from 1975 to 2006. Along with Bo Manly, former executive vice president and chief synergy officer at Smithfield until 2015 who joined Smithfield Foods in 1986, the two executives convinced the larger pork producers to send additional supplies of pigs to a centrally located facility that would become Tar Heel.

“Smithfield grew from a regional company to a national, and eventually global company largely through acquisitions,” Watts explained. “It grew through the ‘90s by acquiring some companies and some capital. Tar Heel is probably the poster child of that. But we had a tremendous spurt of growth for about 15 or 20 years because we had a very entrepreneurial CEO (Luter). He snapped up some great companies that were at a great value at the time, and he made it work.”

For many years, the leadership philosophy was “buy these companies, have faith in their management teams and let them run as separate, independently operated businesses,” Watts said. That worked very well until it didn’t anymore.

“We turned around one day with 13 operating companies that played in a similar space that were kind of falling all over each other,” he said. “If you think about that, you have 13 companies, 13 HR departments, 13 sales forces. We had a lot of redundancy of effort. We had a lot of decisions that were a little bit narrow just because the scope wasn’t there to see everything. And we had to make some decisions to bring these companies together.”

In addition to streamlining its pork business, the company also consolidated the number of regional distribution centers and opened a 500,000-square-foot distribution center in 2018. Smithfield built the DC, as it’s called internally, to improve transportation logistics and stop redundant mileage. Smithfield closed distribution centers in Clayton, NC, and Newport News, Va., in 2019 and transferred those operations to Tar Heel, reducing the company’s annual transportation and warehouse costs by about $45 million.

The DC has about 46,000 pallet positions and an annual capacity of 1.2 billion lbs. The facility includes a quick-freeze room and a 130,000-square-foot blast cell cold storage room with a storage capacity of 140 million lbs. The company invested $100 million into the facility and created 250 new jobs.

Sustainable system

A facility the size of Tar Heel uses a lot of water and can generate plenty of byproducts that can be put to good use. For example, the wastewater treatment system at Tar Heel produces renewable natural gas that provides power to the facility and more than 2,000 homes and businesses in the town. Smithfield also funds and operates a $30 million municipal water plant that supplies water to Tar Heel.

Smithfield reduced the use of potable water at Tar Heel through reuse/reclaimed water systems that send roughly 1 million gallons of water per day to the refrigeration system and outdoor washdown hoses. Additionally, Pretreatment Dissolved Air Flotation (DAF) systems remove up to 80% of fats, oils and grease from wastewater. The materials are sent to a rendering facility, refined and later sold.

However, Stewart Leeth, chief sustainability officer, said the concept of sustainability encompasses many domains at Smithfield.

“It implies not just environment but animal care, food safety and quality, worker safety and DEI. It’s really unique in the industry and helped the industry. If you look at our competitors and even our trade associations, they adopted many of the same pillars that we adopted years ago.”

Future focused

Tar Heel isn’t just a different plant compared to when it first opened in the early ‘90s. Watts said managers must engage individuals in a different way to attract and retain the younger generation of employees the company hopes will become long-term team members.

“It’s not just about your 9-to-5 job, it’s about being good corporate citizens and making sure that we tell the story in the community but also on the national stage,” he said.

Tucker said a generational shift is under way in the facility’s workforce. This next-gen workforce wants fewer PowerPoint presentations and more hands-on learning.

“You have a lot of the baby boomers leaving and my generation coming in and taking over, and then you have the younger workforce coming in,” she said. “I’ll be honest, it’s a very different work force. We have to figure out what inspires them to come to work every day, what incentivizes them to stay.”

“I think automation helps and also just adapting to that new way to incentivize these workers to enjoy their jobs,” she said. “That’s a lot more what it’s about.”