(Radio Iowa) -A regional cattle processing plant that’s planned for the Council Bluffs area is expected to benefit from the Biden administration’s just-announced Meat and Poultry Supply Chain Action Plan. Chad Tentinger, founder of Cattlemen’s Heritage, says the massive facility will get a financial boost from the billion dollars earmarked for expanding the footprint of independent processors. Tentinger says they’ll break ground late this spring or early summer. “We are in fundraising right now through various means, talking to a lot of investors at this point,” Tentinger says. “We are 75% done with all blueprints and planning. We have the site under control. We have done grid sampling and boring samples to make sure it’s stable. We’re moving along quite nicely.”

The project is on schedule, he says, to be completed by late 2023 or early 2024. Tentinger says their approach is different because they want to put a face on their product for consumers and give small family farmers a place to sell their high-quality cattle and be rewarded for it. “Our plant will be 400,000 head a year, roughly 1,500 head a day. We will have 750 employees. We will have a $1.1 billion annual impact on the state of Iowa. We are incorporating all of the latest technology into this plant. We will have agent source verification from the ranch to the plate.”

He says they’re still trying to determine if they will sell direct to consumers or online.  “We have a lot of demand for this high quality beef that we’ll be putting through this plant and with that demand, we’re exploring all options,” Tentinger says. “It will be domestic and international. We anticipate a lot of restaurant groups. Cattlemen’s Heritage will be an umbrella that will set the gold standard of quality for meat.”

Tentinger says the goal is build the facility and not be bought up by one of the nation’s four major meatpackers.