Perham plans expansion

“We buy eggs.”
It’s a simple sentence, but one Bernie Coyle, North Central Equity vice president of manufacturing, is looking to get across to Ohio and Indiana farmers.
Already looking to expand the recently-opened Perham Egg Ohio facility in Fort Recovery — an egg-breaking branch of North Central Equity — he’s searching for additional area farms to provide eggs to allow implementation of a second shift by Oct. 1.
The facility breaks about 144,000 eggs an hour and fills an over-the-road tanker in little more than three hours to provide yolks, whites and a whole egg mixture for grocery store shelves and businesses such as McDonalds.
An in-demand industry, Perham Egg was looking for a location to help in its expansion, and Fort Recovery became a find with its available amenities.
“There’s a very high concentration of lay hens in this part of the country, and there is a shortage of breakers in this part of the country,” said Coyle, adding that Ohio is estimated to have 30 million lay hens — one of the largest populations in the country. “So when you have that many birds making that many eggs, it spells opportunity.”
It also helped that the village has the wastewater capacity to handle the up to 50,000 gallons of water being used every day to process and clean the eggs.
The same eggs that will be broken and shipped out for further processing before making their way into grocery stores, restaurants and hotels.
It’s an industry Coyle says is more widespread than people consider.
“The biggest thing for this industry happened in April 2013. McDonalds decided to go national with an all-white egg McMuffin. The only way to make an all-white egg McMuffin is to go through a breaker,” said Coyle. “Have you been to the Pak-a-Sak lately? You can get a nice egg sandwich in the morning, can’t you? There’s a company that makes that for them.”
While expansion is planned for the near future to accommodate the demand, the start of operations last week didn’t come without setbacks.
The first came in the form of filling management positions as well as the 20 vacancies in its production line.
Becoming disheartened by multiple no-show candidates, Coyle took another approach with the advertising for the available spots — give everyone an opportunity.
“Simple: if you show up, you get an interview,” said Coyle of the message sent through advertising for a three-day job fair the company held. “Everyone that showed up got an interview. It was 138 people. We were trying to fill 20 positions.”
With positions filled, it was the arrival of equipment that postponed its opening from June 1 to mid-July.
The breaker was manufactured overseas and was to arrive in mid-May in time for the proposed opening. When the equipment arrived, the company found it destroyed during the shipping process. The manufacturer had to completely re-make the breaker and ship it by air to the facility, leading to weeks of postponement.
But with operations finally up and running, Coyle is looking forward to forming new business relationships with local farmers to increase the plant’s productivity to two lines.
He’ll take his cause to the local Mercer County Fair to ask resident farmers to help with their egg needs, displaying a large sign that simply reads, “We buy eggs!”