Clemens Food Group’s Hatfield North facility was FE’s 2023 Plant of the Year Award winner for the project team’s vision and execution of improving business while focusing on human welfare.
Construction projects, like stories, tend to follow a regular, logical progression. Delivery systems vary, but they all typically start with a client’s need, selecting a project team, site visits, design meetings, groundbreaking and so on—but in the case of Hatfield North, the project began with the smokehouses.
Clemens Food Group is the fifth largest pork processor in the U.S. The sixth-generation family-run business has been in operation since 1895. Headquartered in Hatfield, Pa., about 30 miles north of Philadelphia, the company was having a good problem: Its pork products were in high demand, and it needed to increase output. However, its flagship pork manufacturing and processing facility wasn’t able to meet that demand due to efficiency issues caused by the facility itself. Ad hoc renovations that had taken place over the flagship facility’s 75 years in existence had created flow problems. The decision was made to use 32 acres of greenfield on the Hatfield campus to create an all-new, state-of-the-art facility that would be able to meet the company’s needs.