Egg producer contracts with Cal-Maine Foods

DECATUR — Cal-Maine Foods, Inc., recently began contracting with Nichols Family Farms of Decatur for the production and processing of eggs, according to Tim Dawson, vice president and CFO of Cal-Maine Foods.

Cal-Maine Foods, of Jackson, Miss., is the largest producer and marketer of shell eggs in the United States and one of the largest producers and marketers of value added specialty eggs such as cage-free and organic eggs. The company represents 18 percent of the domestic egg consumption in the United States, according to its website, www.calmainefoods.com.

Nichols Family Farms will continue to manage the production and processing facilities, according to Dawson. Cal-Maine Foods now owns the hens and some of the equipment, but Nichols Family Farms still owns the farms and processing facilities, he said.

“This kind of contract relationship is fairly common in the industry,” Dawson said.

Dawson said he was not familiar with the details of the Decatur operation.

Nichols Family Farms opened an egg processing facility in the former Hooper’s Grocery Store on Main Street in Decatur in May of 2009. The plant processes cage-free and organic eggs from the Nichols’ farms. Cal-Maine Foods has two other processing facilities in Arkansas, including Benton County Foods of Siloam Springs, according to the company's website.

Kent Nichols, owner and CEO of Nichols Family Farms, did not return a phone call by press deadline.

The Nichols have been in the poultry business since 1996 and have been producing cage-free eggs since 2004, according to an article in the July 22, 2009, issue of the Decatur Herald.

Unlike conventional hens, which spend their lives packed in tiny cages, cage free hens are free to roam around the chicken house.

They climb into nest boxes to lay their eggs and the eggs are carried out on a conveyer belt, the article states.

The processing plant in Decatur currently produces about 172,000 dozen eggs - or 2.06 million individual eggs - during an average week, and employs 40 people, according to office manager Cynthia Foltz.

The company produces American Humane Certified cage-free and organic eggs from 11 farms, she said.

“It’s doing great and really growing,” Foltz said of the processing plant.