Tyson closure date arrives as fate of Lexington plant remains uncertain

Operations at the Tyson Foods meatpacking plant in Lexington will officially cease on Tuesday as the city continues to grapple with a future without the city’s largest employer.

Tyson announced in November that the plant, which employed more than 3,200 people, would permanently close on Jan. 20. Some employees had their final shifts last week as Tyson scaled back operations. Meatingplace, a meat processing news site, reported that shifts were eliminated starting on Jan. 2.

The closure is expected to have a massive financial impact on Lexington and Dawson County, and across the state. An economic impact analysis from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln estimated that the closure will cost the state nearly $3.3 billion in annual economic losses due to reduced tax revenues, lost income and decreased spending within communities.

At a press conference last week, Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen said he’s been talking to Tyson representatives frequently about the future of the building. Pillen said Tyson will not strip the plant to make it unusable for meatpacking.

“When people are talking about, they're going to destroy the plant, fill it in with concrete and all that stuff, that’s hogwash,” Pillen said.

Pillen said he’s hopeful that Tyson will make a decision “quickly,” and said the company is assessing “if they can turn it into a case-ready meat plant or other processing within the Tyson chain.” Tyson similarly said in a statement that it is evaluating how it can repurpose the facility within its own production network.

“I’m pushing at every meeting – look, you have to decide that sooner than later, and that plant has to get repurposed sooner than later.” Pillen said. “It can’t take months and months or years. It’s not fair. It’s not fair to Nebraska. It’s not fair to Lexington. It’s not fair to the people that have given everything.”

Tyson made significant expansions to the plant since it bought Iowa Beef Packers, which operated the plant from 1990 until its acquisition in 2001. In 2015, the company invested $47 million to expand cold storage and warehousing. In a marketing video released at the time of the expansion, then-president of Tyson’s fresh meats division Steve Stouffer said the investment was “an assurance” to the community.

“We’ve been here for 25 years – our expectation is we’re going to be here for the next 25 and then some,” Stouffer said.