Dubuque Packing Company

In June 1891, the Dubuque Packing Company was founded by the merger of the Dubuque Packing & Provision Company and the Dubuque Butchers Association. Until the early 1930s, the company acted as a local meat supplier. In 1931, H. W. Wahlert purchased the plant with the Christian Schmitt family of St. Louis. At the time of the purchase, the company employed only sixty people. The new firm was incorporated with Wahlert as president and underwent a massive renovation including extra refrigeration and the addition of rooms where unconsumable items were kept separated from the rest of the plant. Despite the Great Depression, the organization grew rapidly under Wahlert's leadership including the production of canned hams — the first food product America exported after World War II.

In the 1950s, the company became the second-largest employer in Dubuque. Employment reached 3,500 in the 1960s and sales supported a payroll of $20 million by the 1970s. During the organization's most successful period, the company operated 12 plants with sales near $2 billion. At its peak, it was the third largest beef processing plant in the United States.

In 1948, ten employees of the Dubuque Packing Company pooled $5 each, in combination with a loan for $123.20 from the Amalgamated Meat Cutters Local Number 150, to charter Dupaco Credit Union, which eventually became Dupaco Community Credit Union.

Labor union negotiations with the company made workers at the plant some of the highest-paid employees in the city. Dun's Review listed the company as the fifteenth-largest privately held company in the United States in 1978, with sales of about $390 million. At its peak, the company's sales approached $2 billion and it had 12 plants. It was the third-largest beef slaughter in the U.S.

The company was also recognized for the quality of the products they made. In 1960 and 1961, the company won gold medals at the California State Fairs for their canned hams. They also became one of the largest suppliers of kosher meat in the United States.

By the 1980s, the Dubuque plant began to decline. In 1980 the Dubuque Packing Company announced that they lost $9.9 million through beef operations at its Dubuque facility. They asked the union for concessions, based on claims of market changes, high wages, and equipment problems. The company also shut down parts of the plant. By 1981, nearly 1,400 were unemployed when the hog kill was shut down. Then, in 1982, company management announced that the plant would close on October 16, 1982, which would put 1,200 people out of work and bring the unemployment rate up to 17.2 percent. This was despite a 15.8 percent cut in pay and benefits that union workers had taken, and a reduction in taxes by the city.

Near the end of 1982, the President and Chairman of Dubuque Packing Company Charles E. Stoltz sold the packing plant and its fleur-de-lis trademark to a group which included Robert H. Wahlert. The packing plant began operations as FDL Foods, Inc. The Dubuque Packing Company moved its headquarters to the Dubuque Building, where it continued to bargain with the union over pension and insurance benefits. In 1985 the headquarters was moved to Omaha, Nebraska to be more centrally located to its other plants, which were processing primarily beef at that time. The company again flourished and was later sold in a leveraged buyout to BeefAmerica, a firm controlled by Eli Jacobs. Its gelatin operations were sold to the French company Sanofi. BeefAmerica went out of business in 1998 following a recall and a strike.