By JIMMY LAWTON

POTSDAM -- One year after the Clarkson stepped in to aid a struggling mobile slaughterhouse, the business remains inoperable, but has proven it can turn a profit.

Matthew Draper, Executive Director at Clarkson’s Shipley Center for Innovation, has been working with Renee Smith, owner of North Country Pastured.

Smith did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The business received wide praise in 2012 when it was promised of more than $200,000 in public funding, but failed to get off the ground following a series of problems, that began with the poorly manufactured mobile unit and spiraled downward from there.

The custom-built trailer was outfitted to slaughter and process chickens with USDA certification. It was designed and manufactured by Brothers Bonding Equipment, based out of Ohio. The unit months behind schedule, was riddled with design flaws.

In 2013 the company received $50,000 from the St. Lawrence Redevelopment Agency, and a $30,000 loan from the Town of Canton.

It has not yet received a promised $130,000 Empire State Development reimbursement grant through the North Country Regional Economic Development Council because it hasn’t met the requirement of creating four new jobs.

In 2014 Clarkson President Tony Collins, who serves on the NCREDC, offered support for the project.

Clarkson engineers were to going to help redesign the botched slaughterhouse, which was apparently not road worthy, according to New York State standards.

However, Draper said before the redesign it was important to establish a business plan that could ensure a profit. Over the past year Clarkson students and sub-contractors from Golden Technologies, Jefferson County, worked to develop a plan that could turn an investment.

“We needed to prove it could be able to pay the bills and make a return to the investors,” he said.

Original plans had called for the slaughterhouse to travel to farms where it could park, butcher the chickens and move on. But Draper said that the processor would need to butcher about 500 chickens a day to turn a profit on that model, which he said was unrealistic for the size of the unit.

The current model involves purchasing the chickens from local farmers, processing them and selling the chickens to restaurant and other high-end buyers.

Draper said the public’s growing interest in knowing where their food comes from lends itself well to the new plan.

He said the business plan calls for focusing on the right customers, purchasing humanely raised and high quality chickens and bringing them directly from the farm to the table.

A Sunday chicken barbecue celebrated the new business model and functioned as test run for the operation.

For the event North Country Pastured purchased 150 chickens from PRZ enterprises in Adams. Draper said they were raised in just eight weeks and processed and stored just one week prior to being served and sold at a profit.

Draper said what happens next is up to Smith. At this point Smith could work with Clarkson engineers to help make the slaughterhouse mobile or begin implementing the new business plan to turn a profit.

“It’s a private company, we are just here to help. How they proceed depends on what the company chooses, but our business models shows it could run year round.”

North Country Pastured was owned jointly by Renee Smith, Ellen Rocco, Liam Hunt and Rick Welsh. Welsh said he is no longer affiliated with North Country Pastured.