In an industry where problems tend to outweigh solutions, Utah Beef Producers’ (UBP) new beef processing plant in Richfield, Utah, represents what can happen when someone is willing to risk it all and not take ‘no’ for an answer. Henry Barlow is that man and since hosting the plant’s grand opening this past March in Sevier County, beef cattle producers and ranchers across the state are no longer forced to wait months to have their cattle slaughtered due to a shortage of processing capacity in the region.

Barlow, owner of UBP, had almost no experience or background in the beef industry or knowledge of the food industry prior to this project. His journey has been equal parts entrepreneurial spirit, undying initiative and divine intervention.

“I think God put just enough cattle into my life for me to go out there and see the pinch point that so many of these guys are feeling,” said Barlow, who looks the role of a rancher, complete with a dark cowboy hat.

That pinch point evolved to a dagger in the side of beef producers during the pandemic.

According to UBP, approximately 400,000 head of cattle are shipped out of the state each year, either to feedlots, which are few and far between in the region, or to a faraway slaughtering plant that has capacity, which has become a rarity.

“If you had a big group of cattle to get harvested, you did not have a lot of options here,” Barlow said. “And so, consequently, thousands of cattle in the state of Utah leave the state every year because there just wasn’t that option.”

Years ago, cattle were finished in Utah, but that hasn’t been the case for the past couple of generations.

He pointed out that about 25% of meat eaters in the country could be served by UBP within a two-day shipping period. But the norm has become shipping the cattle in Utah to the east, out of state, to be finished at a feedlot and/or to be slaughtered at a plant only to be shipped back west to customers there. The addition of UBP also makes the feasibility of operating a feedlot closer to producers more realistic.

“You’re putting a lot of miles on a steak before it hits that consumer,” he said, including those meat eaters from California to Texas.

“There’s a big audience and there’s a big need,” he said. “And for the dairyman, the ranchers in this region, to not have the option, up until now, to get a large quantity of cattle harvested, it’s been a real problem.”

After seeing the challenge area beef producers knew all too well, Barlow said his first solution was to rally ranchers to organize co-ops, by county, to sell the cattle and have the meat processed. However, after several months of pursuing that strategy, he realized the co-op business model would not make a significant difference for producers in the region.

Staffing for a single shift, five days per week, has not been a challenge at UBP, where about 30 employees are enough to keep up with demand at the mid-summer mark of this year. (Source: Utah Beef Producers)

Leap of faith

It quickly became clear that to have a real impact, a processing plant needed to be built. So, Barlow went all in on that pursuit and ultimately purchased a 39,000-square-foot building that was formerly a beer distribution center and converted it to a meat processing operation, plus added an 8,000-square-foot barn. It was built to handle a slaughter capacity of 200 head per day on a single shift.

“We went ahead and took it from beer to beef,” Barlow said.

The facility was designed with one side dedicated to fresh, never frozen products. The other side is for frozen storage and direct shipping.

The repurposed plant replaced many of the jobs lost when the distribution center closed. Between the construction process and the positions being filled at the plant, UBP is fulfilling another one of its key missions, which is to stimulate the local economy. UBP is also committed to investing in sustainable operations and humane treatment of animals. Barlow and his team have additionally made ag education and awareness about career opportunities in ag a priority through speaking engagements to educators and students as well as supporting community events.

The project was completed in about a year-and-a-half, despite countless obstacles and plenty of skepticism from many outsiders. He didn’t discuss the investment amount to purchase and repurpose the property but mentioned that despite applying for governmental grants available in some parts of the country for such projects, none of them came to fruition. He said decentralizing the food supply chain needs to include giving companies like UBP access to grant money and not only to companies in the Midwest.

“There are certain states that are more likely to and more able to get the federal grants,” he said. “But those federal grants have been hard to get our hands on.

“We’re massively changing the region in terms of food security and yet it’s really difficult to get your hands on federal dollars to help,” he said. “It’s a big lift,” especially considering the infrastructure costs, which for UBP included boring and installing a mile-long sewer pipe and building a wastewater pretreatment plant and a wastewater treatment plant.

“It’s such a massive economic entry point that somebody given all the challenges and all the mountains to climb, I think 99 out of 100 would never even try. And that’s probably why it took somebody like me, who was all the way out of the industry to do what I’m doing here.”

Nevertheless, the project was expedited by Barlow hiring a consultant to provide some input as well as some key mentors who helped him along the way. The fact that there are no layers of bureaucracy to navigate and pacify was also beneficial.

“It has not been decision by committee,” he said. “When new information comes and there is a better way, I literally make the decision and move quickly. That’s one of the reasons why I built this place in 80 weeks instead of four years.”

Realizing the vision for building a plant was a leap of faith for Barlow, who, at 55 years old, spent most of his career as a general contractor and subcontractor for commercial construction. But never had he taken on a project like building a beef plant. And he admits that dabbling in ranching on a very small scale sparked a passion for working in the beef cattle industry, but he never dreamed of how that would evolve.

“We’re in the people business”

What helped make the vision a reality was building a great team around him.

“If you look at me and my background and history, nine out of 10 people in the room would say, ‘You have no business even being in this industry,’ because I don’t,” Barlow said. “I don’t come from a background of being a butcher or owning a slaughterhouse or working in a slaughterhouse or even working in a butcher shop. That’s all the way out of my wheelhouse. But I’ve surrounded myself with good people.”

Barlow said the learning curve on the project was steep, but he learned as much as he could from others in the industry, attending some industry trade shows and researching and studying on his own in addition to paying for knowledge through industry consultants. The project was a pattern of collecting as much information as possible and making sound decisions, but some situations arose when Barlow didn’t feel like he had the right information, which would cause progress to temporarily stall. He was always aware though, that some stages of the project couldn’t wait, for example, when it came to decisions about equipment. In those cases, UBP was forced to be a little unconventional.

“We certainly haven’t been a company that waits for all the lights to turn green before we left the station,” Barlow said. “We have put our best foot forward even when it was a little bit early,” including starting training at the plant even before it was completely done.

Through that learning process and from groundbreaking to completion, he said city, county and state officials were supportive of his efforts. He said to pull off a project like this requires an understanding that finding the right location and community that is accepting of it isn’t necessarily a given.

“You can’t go try and do it somewhere that’s going to hate you right off the bat,” he said, and that is what made Richfield appealing. “You’ve got to have people that are willing to roll up their sleeves and go to work with you.”

Hiring at the plant has not been a significant hurdle, and as of mid-summer, UBP had just over 30 employees, which is enough to keep up with the initial demand and working through efficiencies at the plant to ensure continued growth and additional capacity. The leadership team, including those in key roles such as the plant manager, kill floor manager and fab floor manager, is comprised of a mixture of people with backgrounds in the cattle industry and some with experience in large-scale meat processing plants. Throughout the start-up, Barlow said the knowledge and input from US Department of Agriculture officials has been beneficial as they continue to be integral in identifying opportunities for more operational efficiencies.

UBP is working with about 40 area beef producers from within a radius of approximately 200 miles of the plant. In mid-July, UBP was slaughtering about 100 head of cattle per week. Of the beef produced from those cattle, about 70% goes to foodservice customers, much of which is ground product those customers have contracted for. Additionally, about 20% of the product is custom processing and the remaining 10% is sold as UBP branded product direct to consumers.

Eleven weeks into production, Barlow said the emphasis was on navigating customers’ specifications, coordinating cut lists and packaging requirements of the three segments of the business.

“At this point we’re in a position that most of what we’re doing is buying cattle and selling beef for these guys,” Barlow said. “And it’s making a massive impact in the state, and we are doing what we said.”

The initial production goals are being met and Barlow said he has no doubt that the growth will ensure UBP will hit increased capacity targets in the next three to five years.

“We literally will be turning around thousands of head of cattle that will not have to leave the state anymore.”