Double Your Income with Robotics

In Eagle Grove, Iowa, Prestage Foods will open a new pork processing plant that uses advanced robotics. The development agreement between Wright County and Prestage required that the company create at least 922 jobs with the new plant. The average annual income in Wright County is $25,964 while the average annual wages at the plant are projected to be around $47,000.

“There’s going to be a number of high-tech machines involved in our process, including robotics with vision,”Jere Null, chief operating officer of Prestage, said. “Imagine you take several frames of a carcass coming by and the computer can distinguish lean from bone from fat. It can tell that robotic arm exactly how to cut based on what it’s looking at.”

As for those who will qualify for these new, much higher-paying positions, Null says, “Your employee that you end up hiring will be an electronics engineer that will help program and maintain the robot. It’s a highly productive piece of equipment, but it changes the skillset we need from employees. A lot of the precision cutting we are doing is moving towards robotics. What would have previously been a laborious, back-breaking type job like holding a heavy saw and cutting and things like that can now be done by a robot.”

At the beginning of 2018, Prestage and Iowa Central Community College intend to begin training programs for these new positions. The training program is funded by bonds which have been sold through community colleges throughout the state and costs Iowa taxpayers nothing, according to the Iowa Economic Development Authority.

Dan Kinney, president of Iowa Central, said “This allows the state to attract new businesses, help cover some of that training cost, but really it’s not costing the state anything because it’s done through their withholding tax. This is really a unique program.”

“There will be further opportunities for people to gain skills to better prepare them to enter the workforce and to be eligible for a position at Prestage. Right now we are trying to better prepare our current pool so they are ready to hit the ground when the jobs open,” said Shelly Blunk, executive director of economic and workforce development for Iowa Central.