Tyson Foods returns to Sioux City the week of a plant-closure handoff

Tyson Foods flew from its Northwest Arkansas base to Sioux Gateway Airport on May 10, landing just before midnight in a 21-minute hop that barely left the pattern. The Dassault Falcon 2000EX, tail N902TF, arrived the same week the city of Lexington, Nebraska, authorized its city manager to sign agreements with Tyson Foods concerning the company's recently closed beef-processing plant, per the Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

The brief flight — essentially a loop out of KSUX — suggests a site visit or meeting tied to the plant's future. Lexington, a city of 11,000, lost 3,200 jobs when Tyson Foods shuttered the facility in January as part of a broader effort to "rightsize the company's beef business," the company said in a November release. The collaboration agreement includes transferring Tyson Foods' wastewater facility and farmland to the city while helping identify potential developers for the processing plant.

Tyson Foods has been consolidating its beef operations, closing the Lexington plant and eliminating a shift in Amarillo, Texas, earlier this year. The company's second-quarter results, released May 4, showed beef segment operating losses of $500 million to $350 million expected for fiscal 2026, with the USDA projecting domestic beef production will decrease about 2%.