Operations Executive of the Year: Freddy Mortensen ... · PDF filespeaks for itself – the math is pretty simple.” He repeats the mantra: “In my opinion, ... operations executive

The business journal for meat and poultry processors • www.MeatPoultry.com • July 2013

INSIDE: Animal Welfare Focus: Cull Cattle

Small Business Matters Profi le

Formulating Meat Analogs

Segment Focus: Portion Control

Operations Executive of the Year: Freddy Mortensen,

Plumrose USA

16 • Meat&Poultry • July 2013 • www.MeatPoultry.com

XXX

BS 6/14

KC 6/11

Cover Story

V elkommen! He greets guests to the reception area of

the new, sun-splashed foyer of the Plumrose head-

quarters building as if he’s welcoming them to his home.

Indeed, for the past two years, Freddy Mortensen, senior

vice president of operations with Plumrose USA, has spent

more time at the new Council Bluffs, Iowa, facility than at

home. Designing and building the 130,000-sq.-ft. plant

has been a labor of love for Mortensen, who was fully en-

sconced in an affair that spanned 54 weeks from ground-

breaking to ribbon cutting, with a price tag of $78 million.

“This is the best ham plant in the world today,” he as-

serts, with an unmistakable Danish accent. Having oper-

ated now for about nine months, the start-up’s kinks and

hiccups have been worked out of the plant where current

capacity is about 260,000 lbs. of sliced ham per day with

a crew of just 90 people. The new facility is barely beyond

the shadows of the original Plumrose plant, where demand

outpaced capacity several years ago.

It’s impossible to not notice his pride and the emanat-

ing sense of satisfaction as he sits to discuss, among other

things, the plant he calls his crowning achievement. Soft

spoken and humble, Mortensen � rst tells of a storied ca-

reer that started modestly and very far from Iowa. He re-

� ects on his being honored as Meat&Poultry’s Operations

Executive of the Year and teases that he has one last item

lingering on the bucket list of his career, as he reluctantly

plans for a slow ride into the sunset this fall.

Danish rootsBorn in 1944 and raised in Denmark, Mortensen dropped

out of school as a 14-year-old and began an apprenticeship

in butchering and sausage making. After paying his dues

working as a butcher for several years, he realized educa-

tion would allow him to accomplish more.

“I went back to school for � ve years; every night,” he

recalls.

At the age of 25, he got a job with the Danish Meat

Research Institute. During his 12 years working there, he

served as a planner and designer of slaughtering facilities.

“That was too boring,” he says. So, he began study-

ing meat technology in the evenings, after his day job, as

a process planner and time study. Eventually, he worked

his way up to the position of troubleshooter for DMRI

until 1982. He then went to work as a product developer

for Denmark’s Ess-Food, which at the time controlled 80

percent of the hogs in the region. While at Ess, Mortensen

had an opportunity to work in the United States on a con-

tract basis for the company that is now Danisco, which

would later make him a job offer he couldn’t refuse. He

worked there for nine months before being recruited by

the president of Sure Pak, a plastics company that was

then producing cook-and-� ll bags internationally. His

only complaint: “I spent too much time in the of� ce and

I’m not an of� ce person.” After � ve years with that com-

pany, they opened a plant in St. Joseph, Mo., where he

BY JOEL [email protected]


Crowning achievementsCrowning CrowningCrowning Crowning CrowningCrowning Crowning CrowningCrowning Crowning CrowningCrowning Crowning CrowningCrowning Crowning CrowningCrowning Crowning CrowningCrowning achievementsachievementsachievementsachievementsachievementsachievementsachievementsachievementsachievementsachievementsachievementsachievementsachievementsachievementsachievementsachievementsachievementsachievementsachievementsachievementsachievementsachievementsachievementsachievementsachievementsachievementsachievementsachievementsachievementsachievementsachievementsachievementsachievementsachievementsachievementsachievementsachievementsachievementsachievementsachievementsachievementsachievementsachievementsachievementsachievementsachievementsachievementsachievementsachievementsachievementsachievementsachievementsachievementsachievementsachievementsachievementsachievementsachievementsachievementsachievementsachievementsachievementsachievementsachievementsachievementsachievementsachievementsachievementsachievementsachievementsachievementsachievementsachievementsachievementsachievementsachievementsachievementsachievementsachievementsachievementsachievementsachievementsachievementsachievementsachievementsachievementsachievementsachievementsachievementsachievementsachievementsachievements

Photography by Chris Ruhaak

www.MeatPoultry.com • July 2013 • Meat&Poultry • 17

Before riding into the sunset, Freddy Mortensen hopes to add one more jewel to his career

accepted a position to introduce cook-and-fill technology

to the American industry in 1987.

When that contract ended, the East Asiatic Co.,

which was then the parent company of Plumrose, asked

Mortensen to come back and be the plant manager at a

processed-meats plant it operated in Booneville, Miss.,

and he accepted.

“I started there June 15, 1992.” He specifically recalls

too, that on April 28, 1994, the Booneville plant was dam-

aged by a fire. Not long after he accepted the position with

East Asiatic, the firm was sold to Vestjyske Slagterier and

later merged with Danish Crown. With all those changes,

management in the US was almost completely revamped,

with exceptions that included Mortensen. “I was the only

one left behind. Then I just grew with the company,” and

he eventually assumed responsibility for managing the re-

maining Plumrose plants.

Fast-forwardDecades later on a sunny day in late March, Mortensen

stands in the spacious, unencumbered lobby of Plum-

rose’s flagship facility, flanked on all sides by two-story-tall

windows, gridded with stark, white panes. The European

flair of the sun-soaked offices and uncluttered space is an

intentional theme that also spills out into the processing

floor. Absent are space-filling decorative ferns, waiting-

room-esque magazines and walls filled with oil paintings

or photos. In the processing area, missing are the honk-

ing forklifts, hand-trucks and hoards of employees packed

into tight quarters inherent in many plants. Ingredients

and products are hydraulically pumped from one process-

ing area to the next, eliminating several logistical steps.

Reflective of Mortensen’s personality, the plant is a

nirvana for admirers of automation, precision and en-

gineering efficiency and it is all housed in walls made of

www.MeatPoultry.com • July 2013 • Meat&Poultry • 17


And it is built to accommodate the growth that is sure to

come, with a capacity to manufacture and slice 387,000

lbs., which would require utilizing two more slicing rooms

that are currently idle, until demand warrants using them.

“When we get an order, it will take seven days until we

can slice it. We cure it, we store it, we cook it, we chill it

then we bring it down to 28°F and then we slice it.

“It’s a humungous amount of stainless steel,” he says

of the processing floor. “It’s been a great project and a

fun project to look back at. It was really exciting to get it

all put together.”

Necessity beckonedPlumrose began production in Council Bluffs in 1999,

just down the street from the new plant. The original fa-

cility was leased from IBP inc., before it was acquired by

Tyson Foods, and the plant was eventually purchased by

Plumrose USA Inc.’s parent company, Danish Crown

AmbA. The company also has US processing facilities in

Booneville, Miss.; Elkhart, Ind.; Swanton, Vt.; and Coun-

cil Bluffs, Iowa. After four years at the Council Bluffs

plant, it became clear that an expansion was needed. “We

were working seven days a week,” and there was a need

to add capacity. It was then that a substantial expansion

was made, and what Mortensen calls the “east side,” was

added in 2004. About eight years later, the company out-

grew the east side.

The inception of the new plant began when Mortensen

and Mike Rozzano, Plumrose’s COO, went to the IFFA

trade show in 2010. They went to Frankfurt on a mis-

sion. “We wanted to build the best plant in the world,”

Mortensen says. “We came home with ideas and started

making some sketches.”

Rozzano says he knew Mortensen was the man to lead

the project from Day 1. “He is a progressive, forward-

thinking person who is constantly looking for better, more

productive innovations in equipment, processing and pack-

aging while protecting our most valued Old World recipes

and flavor,” Rozzano says. “Our collaboration in building

the most modern automated premium lunch-meat plant

in the world is a testament to that.”

Once the sketches evolved into blueprints, getting the

proposal in front of the corporate decision makers took

about a year. With an 8,000 Danish-farmer ownership

group at the top of Danish Crown’s hierarchy, the fact that

“we don’t buy one pound of Danish meat for this plant,”

operations executive of the year

concrete, as solid as a bomb shelter. So, as not to feel overt-

ly institutional or too much like a hospital, color is boldly

splashed throughout the plant. This was Mortensen’s idea.

“You can see my office is nice and bright – European by

design. And everything is blue,” he points out, although

red is his favorite color. Carefully selected tones of blue,

yellow, red and “Harley Davidson-orange” strategically

adorn the walls of hallways, cafeterias and even an unused

slicing room in the plant.

Certain dates are as ingrained in his memory as his

wedding anniversary. “We broke ground in 2011, on Oct.

7,” he says. “The first meat ran on Oct. 31, 2012,” an im-

pressive turnaround by most standards. “We were two

weeks late,” laments Mortensen, an obvious stickler for

details and planning. But the finished plant is a facility

where 260,000 lbs. of product is produced using a frac-

tion of the staff at the Plumrose plant down the street.


Uber-fireproofBecause Danish corporate officials were concerned about fire risks at the new Plumrose plant in Council Bluffs, Iowa, standard insulated panels were scratched from the initial plans. “They would not approve that,” says Freddy Mortensen, senior vice president of operations with Plumrose USA, which meant the only options were rock wall or solid concrete. Mortensen opted for concrete. “It’s the most fireproof building in the country. It can’t burn,” he says. This pushed the project price up by approximately $4 million.


was fortunately not a factor in getting the new plant ap-

proved. Mortensen says the choice was simple: either build

a new plant or sell the company, which had been strug-

gling to keep up with demand.

Atlanta-based ONEsource Facility Solutions helped

develop the initial sketches. “I told them to stay away from

the equipment because we are better at that than they are,”

says Mortensen with a smirk. He specifically recalls getting

the company’s board of directors’ approval of the master

plan in August of 2011 and rushing to secure the property

for the plant, within eye-shot of the original facility. That

was Oct. 1, another date etched in his memory.

At the old plant, about 200 people produce approxi-

mately 400,000 lbs. of product, all of which is sent to Mis-

sissippi, to a slicing facility that employs an additional 400

people. “So, that is 600 people to slice 400,000 lbs. Here

we produce 260,000 lbs. per day using 90 people. That

speaks for itself – the math is pretty simple.” He repeats

the mantra: “In my opinion, it is the best ham plant you

can see in the world today.”

When he was finally able to unveil the plant for officials

from Danish Crown touring the plant for the first time,

Mortensen was as proud as a new father. “It was pure joy

to have the board [of directors] here. They were impressed

and they were happy to see it,” he says.

“Freddy would not allow any compromises in this green-

field project,” chimes in Rozzano, “especially when it came

to product safety and product quality.”

The influentials Behind most rainmakers is a roster of past and current co-

workers and colleagues whose influence and inspiration

is the foundation for others’ legacies. When Mortensen

started with Plumrose, the leadership at the time “had

the guts and the foresight to get it going.” Mike Rozza-

no has been another source of positive influence. “Mike

is my boss, but he was always there and empowered me

to do the decision making. But he was always involved,”



Mortensen says.

“Trust has been a big part of my era at Plumrose,” he

says. “I trust the people I work for and those that I work

with. And, if I tell someone to do something, they do it

and if they don’t, they come back and tell me why not.”

He also pays respect to the plant managers he has

worked with through the years. And David Inman, he

says is one of best maintenance managers in the industry.

“I’m just a small part of a much larger team that knows

how to make things happen,” he says. He admits that ob-

viously not every project is completed without challenges

and almost no production shift is void of hiccups. When

there is a serious problem worthy of inciting an angry rant,

Mortensen makes it a point to take the opposite tack: he

slows down his cadence and lowers his

voice to ensure everyone comprehends

his words, which tend to still be in-

fluenced by his accent. “I want them

to understand every word,” he says.

Global perspectiveMortensen says he’s benefitted from

working in plants all over the world.

“I’ve been very lucky in that way,”

he says. “I traveled to all of the Dan-

ish plants for 12 years, when they

had problems or when they needed

something special done. I traveled

all over Europe, Asia, America and

South America – for 10 years. You

can learn something everywhere you

go. Those experiences are the inspi-

ration in what I do today.”

When it comes to competing in the

US market, Mortensen says it pays to

use your imagination. “We need to see

what is around the corner. If you don’t,

you’ll have a problem,” he says. He

points out that Plumrose depends on

operational excellence, based in large

part to the fact that the company buys

all of its raw material from competi-

tors. “The only way we compete with

them is to be better…and we are,” he

says with a squinting smile.

A big part of being better means

embracing technology, which is re-

flected in the new plant. Mortensen

believes the automated approach to

meat processing is the only option for

the future of the industry. Companies

not adopting the technology and effi-

ciencies available will be left behind.



“I am still missing that day, when I wake up and don’t want to go to work. To me, there are only good days and then there are days that could have been better.”

“I don’t see how they could compete without doing it.”

Through the years though, the relationships with com-

petitors have been valuable. For example, Mortensen

has been friends with Henry Morris, his contemporary

at Smithfield Foods, for decades. “Henry and I talk fre-

quently. We discuss problems and share ideas.”

When the Plumrose plant in Booneville was damaged

by fire, Mortensen remembers how neighboring meat

companies came to the company’s aid. “I called three of

my friends, one in Carolina, one in Iowa and one in Cal-

ifornia,” but all competitors. “They let us borrow room

so we could move our people and slicing operations there

and slice in their facility. That’s what I call ‘good friends’.

That is a blessing. I hope I leave a similar impression on

a lot of people because I will absolutely go out of my way

to help them, too.”

People like Henry Morris and Freddy Mortensen admit

their work ethics teeter on obsession. “We spend the time

on work that it takes to get the job done,” he says. “My

wife would say, ‘Freddy works 24-7.’” This is a contrast to

many of the people coming into the industry today, who

are committed to working specific hours and walking away.

Not Mortensen. “I enjoy what I’m doing every day.” He

believes if there is ever a day when someone dreads going

to work, they should find another job. “I am still missing

that day, when I wake up and don’t want to go to work.

To me, there are only good days and then there are days

that could have been better,” he says.



He tells employees: “I dropped out of school when I

was 14 years old. You too, can succeed; it just depends

on what you want to do with your life. If you don’t enjoy

what you do, why do it?”

He concedes that luck has a tendency to follow people

who work for it. Quoting golf’s legendary Lee Trevino,

Mortensen says: “The more I practice, the luckier I get.”

Reluctant about retirementMortensen fondly recalls dates that mark milestones for

him and the company he’s dedicated

his career to. However, one date that

looms large and creates some inter-

nal conflict for him is coming quickly.

“As a full-time employee, I will stop

Oct. 1,” he says, which is just days

before his 69th birthday. After that,

he has agreed to dial back his day-

to-day involvement, working at least

100 days over the course of the next

year. Mortensen is more than a little

conflicted about retirement. “I can’t

tell you why because,” he pauses and

taps four fingertips on the table, “I

don’t know and I really don’t want

to.” But part of him thinks it may be

time to slow down; to relax a little, as

Inga – his wife of almost five decades

– has urged. “I don’t know how to do

that,” he says, admitting the extent of

his leisure activities include riding his

motorcycle and playing an occasional

round of golf.

“I can’t say I’m looking forward to

it [retirement], not at all. But sooner or

later we all probably need to recognize

there is an end to everything,” he says.

But perhaps not before his next and

final crowning achievement: “build-

ing the world’s best bacon plant.”

Mortensen says that would be his swan

song, “With a little luck…I hope so,”

he says of the probability of that proj-

ect becoming a reality. Meanwhile, he

looks forward to moving to St. Joseph,

Mo., where he and his wife recently

built a house next door to his daugh-

ter. He is happy that he will finally

be able to spend more time with his

grandkids and his own kids, including

his son, Bo, the president of Hansel ‘n

Avure Technologies, the global leader in high pressure processing solutions, has a history of helping meat and poultry processors deliver innovative products — from concept to market launch.

Our HPP equipment and food science provide the safety and shelf life required for today's advanced meat and poultry applications, including raw ground meat and poultry, and marinated whole muscle products.

And with Avure's total solutions, your time to market is optimized — with the greatest opportunity for success.

Food Safety and Shelf Life

© 2013 Avure Techno log ies , Inc . A l l r ights reserved .

WEBINARHPP and Raw Meat Protein

info.avure.com/mp0513

Avure HPP Delivers Both!


OperatiOns executive Of the year

“I never in my wildest imagination considered something like this. I thought I was just another American nobody knew. I’m very honored.”

Gretel Brand Inc., in New York. The transition will likely

be bitter-sweet, though.

Plumrose’s Rozzano is grateful for the opportunity to

share his career with Mortensen and says he is, indeed, a

deserving recipient of this year’s Operations Executive of

the Year Award . “Freddy has been an inspiration to all

who work with him, and especially to me,” he says. “I am

very proud that he has been selected for this award, and

even more proud that I can call him a friend.”

Mortensen reflects with happiness and again under-

states his success. “I’m just a regular dummy who got lucky.

I’ve been very lucky in my life. I’m surrounded with good

people, I have good friends from as far back as when we

were kids. I’ve been healthy, my family is healthy, my wife

and I have been married 46 years and I have two kids and

three gorgeous grandkids.” He is humbled as he looks at

the award bearing his name. “I never in my wildest imagi-

nation considered something like this. I thought I was just

another American nobody knew. I’m very honored.” ■

Join BioSafe Systems’Effective Food Safety ProgramSaniDate®FD is a microbiocide specially blended for use in federally inspected meat and poultry plants. SaniDateFD is effective against bacteria including Salmonella spp., Campylobacter, E. coli, Listeria, Staphylococcus Aureus, and Klebsiella Pneumonia.

• Apply as spray, wash, dip, and in chiller or scald water• Can be applied directly to carcasses, parts, trims, and organs• Certified “Kosher for Passover”• Does not affect desired flavor profiles or product quality• Safe alternative to chlorine and chlorine dioxide

©2013 Copyright BioSafe Systems LLC. Always read and follow label directions. 2.13

Simply Sustainable. Always Effective.

LLC

227

P

SaniDateFD is available in 30, 55, and 275 gallon containers.

Founded on a ‘Field to Fork’ approach and dedicated to environmental stewardship, BioSafe Systems

provides chemistries for all facets of the agricultural production process. Proud to be American Made.

Call 1.888.273.3088 or visit www.biosafesystems.com to learn more.

M I C R O B I O C I D E

Documents

Operations Executive of the Year: Freddy Mortensen ... · PDF filespeaks for itself – the math is pretty simple.” He repeats the mantra: “In my opinion, ... operations executive