March 25, 2016

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Early this week Prestage Farms announced that Epstein will be providing Design-Build services for their new $240M, 650,000 square foot pork processing plant in Mason City, Iowa. This facility, located on a 155-acre site on the corner of Pierce Avenue and 43rd Street, is being designed to process approximately 600 million pounds of pork annually when completed in June of 2018.

This Prestage pork plant will have a maximum height of 45 feet (not including structure for mechanical equipment) and on-site parking will be provided to accommodate 1000 employees a shift. The building is situated on the southern half of the site and there are several outbuildings, including a guardhouse, rendering facility, and waste water treatment facility (all north of the main building).

Epstein's engineers have also designed numerous features for this facility which will help benefit the environment. These sustainable design items include the aforementioned on-site rendering facility which will process inedible portions into value added non-edible products. An added benefit of onsite rendering is that it reduces the number of over the road trucks coming in and out of the Prestage facility. In addition, scrubbers have been designed for all the exhaust vents in the rendering facility which will help to eliminate odors. Another odor fighting design element includes completely covering waste water lagoons to eliminate fumes and also to allow for the capture of methane generated during the treatment process. The methane will be used in the Prestage facility boilers to lessen the natural gas requirements.

The Prestage facility will also feature temperature control throughout the process areas to heighten food safety and quality as well as the potential use of advanced water treatment to allow the recycling of water to wash livestock pens and livestock trailers reducing the water requirements of the plant.

Lastly, stormwater runoff will be collected into a normally dry detention basin in the southwestern area of the site and released so as not to exceed the pre-developed rate of runoff.