An STX Beef sign covers the entrance gate at the former Kane Beef plant on Leopard Street in Corpus Christi. The plant reopened under new ownership March 25. It had closed in January after filing for bankruptcy.
Employees are back on the job at the former Kane Beef meat-packing plant in Corpus Christi. The bankrupt company was sold to STX Beef, which has completed all safety and operational inspections. Work began at 25 percent capacity on Monday, March 25, and will continue to ramp up over the next few weeks.
“This is an exciting day,” said Ryan Connelly, president of STX Beef Co. “First, we would like to welcome back all the former employees of Kane Beef that have joined the STX Beef team. As soon as we completed the acquisition, getting folks back to work was our top priority.”
Kane filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in early January after more than 70 years of operation. Its 726 employees have been on furlough ever since. The company’s financial troubles included owing the city of Corpus Christi $2.4 million for utility services. The city blocked Kane Beef from resuming part of its operations until a hearing on terminating the company’s wastewater discharge permit. It also owed between 100 and 199 creditors $50 million to $100 million, according to court records, among other debts, including government fines.
STX Beef Co., an affiliate of JDH Capital LLC, a Houston-based real estate development company, purchased the meat-processing plant March 15 for $28 million.
Kane Beef began as a meat counter on Morgan Avenue in Corpus Christi in 1949. Sam Kane took over the counter after immigrating to the United States from Czechoslovakia in 1948. He was a resistance fighter to Nazi occupation of Europe during World War II. Most of his family died in concentration camps. His wife, Aranka, survived Auschwitz, immigrating with him to the United States. One of 12 children in an Orthodox Jewish family, Kane learned to butcher and speak English over that Morgan Street counter.
Sam Kane died in 2010. The company sold in 2013 to a group of Texas ranchers under the name Sam Kane Beef Processors Inc. That sold in 2015 to the Fernandez Group from South America.
STX Beef has pledged to bring the plant back to its glory days when it was well known as the seventh-largest meat-packing plant in the world.
“Today’s startup is just the beginning of a new chapter for the business, our team, and our partnership with cattle producers, customers, and the community,” Connelly said after reopening the plant March 25. “We are very excited about the future of STX Beef.”
