GREELEY - The new president of JBS Swift & Co. said a planned expansion of production at the Greeley meatpacking plant is in high gear and will be complete by December.

"We expect to hire the first 500-plus employees within 30 days and be at full staffing by early December 2007," said President Wesley Mendonca Batista, who took over in July, after Brazilian beef processor JBS S.A. purchased Swift in a $1.4 billion deal. Batista's comments were contained in an e-mail reply to an extensive list of questions from the Business Report about his plans for the company.

Within weeks of Bastista's arrival in Colorado, JBS announced that it would add a second shift at the Greeley plant and hire an additional 1,300 workers, bringing total employment at the facility to more than 3,000. Batista also confirmed that JBS Swift would maintain its corporate headquarters in west Greeley, where more than 400 additional management workers are employed.

Batista said JBS Swift would buy as many cattle as possible from local ranchers to meet its expanded production goals. "We have already started talks with many local producers," he wrote.

That's good news for the state's cattle industry, said Terry Fankhauser, executive vice president of the Colorado Cattlemen's Association in Denver. "Obviously, having a viable and hopefully growing and expanding packing industry in Colorado is critical for the producers in this state," he said. "It's important to not only Colorado but other western states as well."

Fankhauser said his organization has not yet been approached by JBS Swift but would be happy to assist the company locate producers. "Any time that dialogue needs to take place, we're more than willing to help facilitate that."

Batista also said Colorado lamb producers will continue to have a market with the company, because there are no plans to sell the existing lamb processing facility, also in Greeley.



Swift buy opened door

Batista said in his reply that the Swift acquisition was an important step for JBS, already the largest beef processor in Latin America.

"Swift was a door for our entrance into some of the most important markets in the world where we did not reach before, not only for geographical but for sanitary reasons," he said. Current international law limits South American beef exports to Europe, Russia and the Middle East, he said.

Gaining Swift meant an entry for JBS to sell beef in America, Australia (where Swift had extensive operations) and in Asia, Batista noted. "Having operations in the USA and Australia, and being able to ship our products to Asia and Mexico, made JBS have a global reach," he said.

Batista said JBS now has beef-processing operations on three continents and in four countries, with trading or sales offices in Europe, the Middle East and many Asian countries. He said the company has the capacity to slaughter more than 47,000 cattle each day, making it the biggest beef processor in the world.

Batista said JBS did not have any particular concerns about acquiring Swift and its $1.2 billion debt.

"We always had several financing options, and at the end chose what we thought to be the best not only for JBS but also for Swift," he said. "We put equity into the company and were able to de-leverage it significantly, allowing it to have one of the healthiest debt ratios in the industry."

Swift took a big financial hit last December when federal agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement raided six of its plants across the country, arresting more than 1,300 people for being in the country illegally or using stolen identities. Swift estimated that the one-day shutdown of the plants, including Greeley where 261 were arrested, cost the company between $45 million and $50 million.

Batista said the company would continue to use the federally recommended Basic Pilot employment-verification program, which checks a potential hire's Social Security number against a federal database.



New investment

Batista said JBS would invest in its Swift plants as the need arises.

"We believe that Swift has good facilities, which of course need maintenance just like any other plant," he said. "As our businesses grow, our intention is to invest in our plants to keep them up to date with our competition, allowing us to maximize our volumes and yields at the same time we lower our costs."

Batista said former Swift president Sam Rovit and Sean McHugh, former vice president for investor relations and communications, were among several management employees who were released in a move to set the new company in a new direction.

"Right after the closing of the deal, we let go some senior executives in order not only to redirect the company's strategy but also to readjust our corporate overhead cost structure to what we believe is comparable to running such a business," he said.

Batista said JBS Swift would be active in the Greeley business community, starting with hosting a Business After Hours for the Greeley Chamber of Commerce on July 26.

Greeley Chamber of Commerce president Sarah MacQuiddy said the previous Swift administration set up the event months ago and she was "thrilled" that the JBS owners honored that commitment.

"I think it really shows their commitment to the community and that they saw it as an opportunity to meet local CEOs and community leaders," she said.

MacQuiddy said the decision to add a second shift and its new jobs is the best thing that could have happened after the uncertainty raised about Swift's future in the city earlier this year.

"It's really exciting," she said. "I think estimates are running in the $80 million range of new dollars into the economy."