WINDOM Minn. — The buyer of the HyLife pork slaughterhouse in Windom appears to be Premium Iowa Pork of Hospers, Iowa. The Iowa company bid $13 million at a bankruptcy auction. It’s not quite a done deal. The sale was placed on hold pending final financing and bankruptcy court consent, sources said. The sale is a major issue in Windom because HyLife, in announcing the sale last week, said that the buyer, which it didn’t name at the time, intended to close the plant and leave 1,000 people, many of them H-2B visa immigrants, without jobs
Premium Iowa Pork profile
The company has headquarters in Hospers, population 700, in northwest Iowa about 70 miles south of Windom. It’s family-owned with about 400 employees. Besides a slaughterhouse in Hospers, the company owns a plant in Luverne, Minnesota, about 30 miles from Windom. The Luverne plant operates as Premium Minnesota Pork. The twin companies are a niche player in the U.S. pork industry. They take pride n buying only 100% antibiotic-free vegetarian-fed pork from farmers with none of the animal byproducts usually found in conventional feed. Only 3% of U.S.-produced pork is certified as antibiotic-free.
Purchaser’s brand. Antibiotic-free vegetarian swine