When Wayne-Sanderson Farms and Jacksonville, Fla.-based design-build firm, Stellar laid out the plan for the 187,122- square-foot addition to the existing 163,681-square-foot poultry processing operation in Enterprise, Ala., it considered flow, automation and employee wellness to be top priorities of the project. The new facility received upgrades and additions including a second processing line, breakroom, offices, live receiving shed, live hanging room, picking room and evisceration, among many other improvements.
In 1979, a group of 13 investors from Enterprise built and opened the original plant, Southland Broilers, and operated it until 1994 when Wayne Farms bought it. Since then, Wayne Farms continued to build onto and update the facility. It was about 23 years later when the company began to talk about growth of the facility and building onto the plant with all the latest technology and automation.
“The plan became to build up another line, another facility on the backside of the original plant,” said Eddie Fortner, area operations manager overseeing the Enterprise and Dothan, Ala., plants. “So, we kept the original plant running two lines at 140 birds a minute the entire time and just went out back and built a new plant.
“Then in May of 2019, there was one wall between the original facility and the new facility. Everything was connected and then Sunday afternoon, before we opened it up, we just took the wall down, and there’s a new plant right there behind the original plant. We started it up the next day and here we are.”
The new build added a Marel controlled atmosphere stunning (CAS) system. Birds are offloaded from trucks in cages and placed into a cool, dark area where they can acclimate and calm down after transport before stunning. When ready, a machine places the cages into the CAS tunnel to run slowly through five stages in which oxygen is gradually reduced and replaced by CO₂. Empty cages immediately move through an automated washing tunnel to be cleaned and prepped for final sanitation.
Moving down the line
After stunning and hanging, the birds enter processing. Except for a hock cutter and an oil gland cutter, Stork Marel outfitted the entire plant, both the original and additional buildings. The two original lines run 1.3 million birds per week while the new added line processes an additional 860,000 per week. This gives the Enterprise, Ala., plant a total of 2.2 million birds processed a week running with two production shifts and a third sanitation shift at capacity.
The birds first run through an enclosed picking machine keeping the mess associated with the process to a minimum. The birds then move through an automated evisceration line that leads to one of two cut-up lines on the original side or the single line on the new side. The choice of line depends on weight, calculated by an automated system that weighs the birds on the way, and a 3D camera that judges by an instantaneous photograph which line is best.
“The system incorporates every bit of the newest automation you can have through the picking tunnel, through evisceration, automated sizing and through the second processing with automated deboning,” Fortner said.
The Enterprise plant supplies quick-service restaurant (QSR) chains almost exclusively, one specific QSR chain takes the majority of that and requires two of the three lines itself, with a small percentage of the production going to distributors. Using the breast cap deboning process, birds move down the line with breasts and tenders as the main focus. The breasts are machine skinned and the wishbone is stamped out. The tendons are cut to release the breast that then gets removed and moves down the line to x-ray detectors while the tenders remain on the frame.
As it goes down the line, a plow spins the frame and releases the tender that is then pulled off by hand and sent through the x-ray machine. The remaining saddle gets the spine cut off and the back is removed and produces whole legs and quarters with some thighs, depending on what’s needed.
“Operations tries to challenge the sales team,” Fortner said. “We say to them, ‘whatever you want and however you want it.’”
A high-pressure water jet cutter first scans the breast meat, then lays it out for cutting depending on the weight parameter programmed. It will then lay out the trim from that breast for a maximum yield of nuggets then cut the breast accordingly. The entire process, including the cuts take place in a fraction of a second.
Separating pieces for marination and packaging is done by robotic arms, eliminating another piece of manual labor in the process through automation. Once marination and seasoning are complete the product is ready for packaging.
Because the Enterprise plant predominantly supplies foodservice customers and a few distributors, it packages its diverse product range in sealed bags and boxes. If called for it will freeze product once packaged before shipping. However, the acquisition of Sanderson Farms Inc. completed in 2022 gives the new Wayne-Sanderson Farms brand access to established retail brands, especially the Naked Truth brand, to serve the retail market.
“We’re looking into going to retail since we bought Sanderson,” said Ron Rogers, South Alabama area complex manager, with responsibility over the Enterprise and Dothan plants, as well as the area feed mills and farms. “That’s where retail lines come from. There are five plants dedicated to retail.”
The south Alabama area plants start with pullets and takes them all the way through to the restaurant within Wayne-Sanderson Farms. Wayne-Sanderson operates farms and feed mills to support its processing throughout the region. As many as 1,300 chicken houses are operated in the surrounding area.
“It’s a lot of houses,” Rogers said. “In south Alabama, I think we have 4,000 employees. So, it’s a big, consolidated part of the operation.”
Wayne-Sanderson Enterprise starts and finishes its birds on a vegetarian diet from pullet to processing. The third line in the new build will also run Global Animal Partnership (GAP) Step 2 birds that come with their own set of standards which requires regular inspection and verification by a third party.
“We’re doing GAP on that third new line,” Rogers added.
Birds stunned in a controlled atmosphere stunner are hung, then moved to an enclosed picking machine. (Source: Sosland Publishing Co./Bob Sims)Safety first
Wayne-Sanderson uses industry standard microbial interventions through dip tanks, chemical sprays and United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) representatives inside the plant doing weekly sampling to maintain food safety integrity. The plant itself also tracks the presence of contaminants by doing its own daily sampling. Machines are swabbed weekly to meet and exceed all industry protocols.
“We also limit the exposure of outside visitors and keep track of who is coming in,” Fortner said. “We want to make sure we don’t have people bringing outside contaminants into the facility.”
In addition to the company’s food safety standards, the facility’s and USDA’s food safety standards, the food safety standards of Wayne-Sanderson’s list of high-profile QSR customers ensure the plant makes every effort to produce safe food for the public.
“From corporate to our customers and all the way down to the plant level, food quality and food safety is at the center of everything,” Fortner said.
The COVID-19 pandemic challenged the entire industry and the world in general. While health was top of mind for everyone, meat processing also faced supply chain issues and protocols that took time to put in place and manage, among many other things. Wayne-Sanderson took the pandemic as an opportunity to improve the way they think about things.
“I think that from a food safety standpoint, going through COVID and waiting rooms and all that stuff we’ve been through has made us more aware of food safety,” Rogers said. “Now in this day and time with new conditions there’s a lot of things on the quality side that we check and verify to be sure that it’s right. We’re all silently, in the back of our mind thinking about, ‘What could happen here? What can we put in place to make sure this doesn’t happen here?’ Food safety is always in the back of our mind, all the time. It [poor food safety practice] could ruin our business.”
He added, “I think that over time going through COVID and having to deal with ingredients not showing up on time and being sure all these new people are mixing the right ingredients and those type of things has made us more aware. We talk about this stuff in our meetings all the time.”
Addressing labor
Labor in the processing industry today continues to affect all food companies, and Wayne-Sanderson deals with that struggle as much as any processor in the industry. Rogers said labor is the biggest challenge the plant faces. And while automation and innovation are abundant, that doesn’t necessarily make jobs go away, it just creates different jobs that require different skills.
“You’re increasing specialists that know how to work on the equipment,” Fortner said.
Wayne-Sanderson Farms, the state of Alabama and the local community colleges created a solution through a grant awarded to the company. The three entities have developed an accredited program that includes schooling and a hands-on apprenticeship at Wayne-Sanderson Farms. Participants go through the program straight out of high school and receive the skills and experience necessary for a career.
“Electronics, electronics, electronics,” Fortner said. “That is the skillset we are looking for.”
With the recent addition, the Enterprise, Ala., plant processes 2.2 million birds per week. (Source: Sosland Publishing Co./Bob Sims)People first
The Wayne-Sanderson plant has developed other innovative ways to not only attract new employees, but make sure it retains employees. Upon hire, hourly employees receive both medical and dental insurance, paid time off (PTO) days and 401k retirement access, as well as sign-on and referral bonuses. The facility also offers an onsite health clinic employees can visit if necessary.
“If an employee is not feeling good, they walk off the line, walk up there and see a medical professional,” Fortner said. “They can get medicine, a referral to an off-site doctor, whatever they need. And their family can use the clinic too.”
A special perk that comes with employment at the Enterprise plant is transportation. Wayne-Sanderson provides transportation for workers to and from the plant every day.
“We have 20, 15-passenger vans we use to provide transportation to employees,” Rogers said. “A lot of people just don’t have a ride. Just giving them a ride has really helped us and it’s helped them. It’s pretty expensive to run, but I think we’re reaping the benefits of getting the employees here and being able to run the plant.”
The cafeteria and employee breakroom has more than enough room for employees to have space. It features a kitchen that serves hot food with an extensive menu and displays employee awards on a flat screen television. And Fortner notes, the plant recently installed Wi-Fi giving employees on break the ability to use their phone if they want.
“With this new generation of employees, the importance of having Wi-Fi here, so an individual, when they get off the line to come to break and do their social media or watch a movie was huge,” he said. “When we did that, our people just really loved that they had the ability not to use up their data plan. They sit in the breakroom and do whatever they need to do on their cell phone. So that was a big deal.”
The Wayne-Sanderson plant has automated its processing through innovative equipment, and it has used innovation to understand what it needs to provide its employees to ensure they have no concerns about making it to work or taking care of themselves and their families.
