Inlet Processing Company the lone bidder for Mount McKinley plant

WASILLA — A single outfit has submitted a proposal to privatize what farmers say is a critical Valley slaughterhouse.

The proposal was submitted by Inlet Processing Company, LLC, a corporation that is just over a little month old, according to Amanda Swanson, a loan officer with the state Division of Agriculture’s Agricultural Revolving Loan Fund. Inlet was founded by Rean and Kristi Brooks, who operate a farm in the Point MacKenzie area under the Mat-Su Valley Feeders, LLC, trademark. They filed the initial paperwork with the state on June 6, according to Division of Corporations, Business and Professional Licencing documents.

“Yahoo! Yahoo!” he said, when informed by a Frontiersman reporter that his was the sole bid.

Mat-Su Valley Feeders has been producing some food for local distributors for a few months. The company produces beef, reindeer and bison meat, and the company had already planned construction on a processing plant in 2017, according to Brooks’ LinkedIn profile. The family relocated to the Mat-Su Borough three or four years ago, Brooks said.

Rean Brooks said Alaska livestock have a strong market position.

“We don’t have to use antibiotics they use everywhere else,” he said. “We’ve got an all natural product.”

Brooks has also served as the owner and operator of Brooks Trucking Company. He said he plans to partner with the University of Alaska Fairbanks to conduct genetic research on local cattle stock. They founded their company as a nonprofit specifically so they could enhance local agriculture, whether through research or through participation with local 4H clubs, Brooks said.

“We’re here to put more people farming,” he said. “We’re here to open up new markets for them. We’re here for all that. That’s the reason we went with the 501(c)3. We’re not here to make money off of you. We’re here for agriculture.”

The bidding window closed as another consortium withdrew from pursuing the plant.

Nate Burris, president of Denali Meats and co-owner of Mat Valley Meats, said Monday his group would not pursue the operation of the Mount McKinley Meat and Sausage slaughtering plant under the terms of a Division of Agriculture proposal. Asked why his group, which had been upbeat about the privatization of the state plant as recently as April, was no longer interested, Burris passed.

“I’d really rather just not comment on that at this time,” he said.

One other party had toured the plant and gathered information to possibly operate the facility, said Division of Agriculture Director Arthur Keyes. The plant would continue to operate through the end of the 2017 fiscal year, which began July 1.

“There’s still funding, and until I hear otherwise, it’s going to operate through the end of the fiscal year,” he said.

The legislature has sought to unload the plant for years after acquiring it in 1986, when private ownership defaulted on a loan. The plant has been subsidized by farmers’ interest payments on low-interest state-backed loans issued for capital improvements. The plant had made a profit only one year between 1986 and 2015.

Plant managers have said they are somewhat hamstrung by their labor force — made up primarily of local prison inmates — and by state laws that prohibit them from selling meat on the local markets in competition with the private sector.

Denali Meats was at the forefront of a renewed push to privatize the plant that began in 2014 after legislators put it on a year-by-year renewal for operations. A prior attempt at privatization in 2000 ended without any interested parties.

The terms for the RFP indicate the plant would be run at a minimum lease rate of $1 per month for the first 24 months of a 60-month lease, with a $1,600 per month lease rate thereafter.

Privatization of state-managed agricultural facilities has a checkered past in the Mat-Su Borough. A former state-owned Mat Maid plant collapsed in 2012 under a pile of publicly financed debt and separate federal investigations.

Virtually all farmers in the area have all said the plant is essential to the local agriculture industry, a sentiment echoed in the Board of Agriculture’s proposal for the plant.

“This facility is critical to Alaska’s agricultural industry,” the RFP reads, in part. “While some limited slaughter/processing facilities are located elsewhere in Alaska, they cannot replace MMM&S in terms of availability to livestock producers, capacity and location.”

Contact reporter Brian O’Connor at 352-2270, brian.oconnor@frontiersman.com, or on Twitter @reporterbriano.