EXIM Chairman Reed Visits Family-Owned Hog Slat, Inc. In North Carolina to Highlight How EXIM Services Can Help U.S. Agriculture and Equipment Manufacturers Grow International Sales
WASHINGTON - Export-Import Bank of the United States President and Chairman Kimberly A. Reed today had a roundtable with senior leadership from and toured the facilities of Hog Slat, Inc., a family-owned business that produces a full range of hog and poultry farming equipment in Newton Grove, North Carolina. Hog Slat has used an EXIM medium-term loan guarantee issued to Wells Fargo to support Hog Slat's international sales.
"Family-owned businesses like Hog Slat represent the best of America. Now with 1,500 U.S. employees and active in competitive international markets, this agricultural equipment success story is able to do even more with a private sector financial institution and EXIM's medium-term loan guarantee program," said Chairman Reed. "I have been around agriculture for my entire life and made it a priority at EXIM to engage with the agriculture community and help level the playing field as they export their goods and services. I thank President Tommy Herring and the entire Hog Slat team for showing me their high-quality pig and chicken steel equipment, as well as feed systems that also work for breweries, and discussing how EXIM also can help agriculture businesses better compete with China and succeed on a global scale."
EXIM Chairman Kimberly Reed with Hog Slat's (clockwise from Reed) Special Projects Manager Shelton Johnson, International Projects Accounting Manager Charles Futrell, Vice Presidente Ventas Internacionales Jeff Smith Robleto, President Tommy Herring, Sales Rep. Eric Soza, Sales Dir. Fritz Richards
During the meeting, Chairman Reed discussed EXIM's historic seven-year reauthorization, which established EXIM's new Program on China and Transformational Exports and directs EXIM to provide financial products to directly neutralize export subsidies offered by the People's Republic of China, helping to ensure a level playing field for U.S. businesses and workers as they compete globally. The program has the aim of advancing the comparative leadership of the United States and supporting U.S. innovation, employment, and technological standards globally in ten transformational export industries including biotechnology. The law charges EXIM with a goal of reserving not less than 20 percent of the agency's totaling financing authority (i.e., $27 billion out of a total $135 billion) for support made pursuant to the program.
Since fiscal year (FY) 2015, EXIM has supported approximately $3.5 billion in agriculture exports through short-term insurance, and in FY2019, 80 percent of the agricultural exports EXIM supported were associated with small businesses.
Hog Slat's Sales Dir. Fritz Richards and President Tommy Herring with "Made in the USA" steel pens for sows nursing their piglets.
ABOUT EXIM:
EXIM is an independent federal agency that promotes and supports American jobs by providing competitive and necessary export credit to support sales of U.S. goods and services to international buyers. A robust EXIM can level the global playing field for U.S. exporters when they compete against foreign companies that receive support from their governments. EXIM also contributes to U.S. economic growth by helping to create and sustain hundreds of thousands of jobs in exporting businesses and their supply chains across the United States. In recent years, approximately 90 percent of the total number of the agency's authorizations has directly supported small businesses. Since 1992, EXIM has generated more than $9 billion for the U.S. Treasury for repayment of U.S. debt.
For more information about EXIM, please visit www.exim.gov.