One Montana Program Manager Matt Bitz will present the results of their Feasibility Study for a Montana Meat Processing Plant this week on Saturday, December 13th at 10:30AM at the Montana Stockgrowers Annual Convention in Billings MT. Bitz was responsible for overseeing the project for the past two years. He said that, based on their research, under the right conditions, a plant in Montana could process 250 head of beef or bison daily.
One Montana, a Bozeman-based nonprofit organization, recently completed a feasibility study showing that it is possible to build a mid-sized meat processing plant in Montana, one that could process up to a combined 60,000 head of beef and bison annually. Bitz’s presentation on Saturday will lay out their findings including their research on marketing, locations, community impacts and design.
“We’re talking about something that could be a real game-changer for Montana producers,” Bitz said, “In the current paradigm, beef from Montana is channeled into the national supply chain and essentially becomes anonymous beef on grocery store shelves. No one really knows if that beef came from Montana. Here we are, one of the largest beef producing states in the US, we have excellent genetics in our beef herd, but we are still just shipping live cattle out of state for slaughter and processing—we are exporting a raw product. Rather than that beef becoming anonymous, One Montana has been researching if it’s possible to process it here in Montana and sell it as Montana beef.”
Bitz said One Montana assembled a team of experts across a wide set of disciplines to conduct research in plant design, marketing, wastewater, labor, and economic impacts. Support for the study has come from the Economic Development Administration’s Planning and Technical Assistance Program, the Big Sky Trust Fund, which is managed through the Montana Department of Commerce, the MSU Department of Ag and multiple private donors.
One Montana is a non-partisan, nonprofit organization based out of Bozeman, Montana that seeks to connect rural and urban communities for economic and community development projects. They decided to conduct the study after hearing from Montana producers that they wished there was a larger beef processing plant in Montana. Based on that producer feedback, Bitz said they focused their study on the potential of a medium sized, source verified processing plant to succeed in Montana.
For more information about this project, contact Matt Bitz, Program Manager, at 406-522-7654.
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