The Producer Partnership, a beef nonprofit, has announced plans for a beef processing plant in Montana. The facility, expected to open in 2022, will be able to process 300 animals a month for Montana food banks and ranchers with direct sales, reports the Billings Gazette.

Currently, the organization has its animals processed at a packing plant in North Dakota, but it has been limited in the number of animals it is able to receive. The Gazette reports that in the past year, the group has donated 80,000 pounds of hamburger to the Montana Food Bank Network. Its goal is to provide more than 140,000 pounds a year to the statewide network.

“We’ve been trying to get kill dates at different plants. That proved to be hard to find a kill date in the first place and then we wound up with so many animals donated that we couldn’t find enough dates,” said Mayzie Purviance, Producer Partnership program administrator.

Source: Billings Gazette