Furloughs of production employees at Premium Protein Products, a meat company operating in Lincoln and Hastings, have been extended to July 15, according to a recorded message delivered Tuesday on the company's Hastings telephone.

The furloughs presumably apply not only to the 250 employees in Hastings, but also to the 60 employees at its Lincoln plant. A woman who answered the phone at the Lincoln plant said no one was available to talk to the Journal Star.

In another development at the distressed meat company, Chairman Steve Sands, a member of the family that owned the company and predecessors for about 100 years, said he has resigned.

The current majority owners of the company, Matlin Patterson, a private equity company in New York that specializes in operating distressed companies, continued to be unreachable for comment.

The recorded message on the telephone at the Hastings plant told employees to call back July 15 for an update of developments.

Neighbors of the Lincoln plant, at 4611 W. Adams St., reported little or nothing doing there on Tuesday. The gates were closed and about 15 cars were parked in the lot Tuesday morning, a fraction of the normal number when the plant was operating. The Lincoln plant processes meat from animals slaughtered at Hastings.

Sands announced a two-week, unpaid furlough of hourly employees on June 10, citing weak beef demand and other financial pressures. He said Premium Protein was exploring "all of our options."

Premium Protein specialized in identity-preserved meat with labels that show its origins all the way back to the producer.

Sands told the Journal Star last week he had resigned as chairman of Premium Protein.

He said he would remain in the industry, and was working on some projects that he couldn't yet discuss.

It was not clear to him what the future holds for the company his family founded as Standard Meat in 1901. He wasn't even certain that it would reopen.

"I certainly hope so and certainly think so, but it's hard for me to really comment on that," Sands said.

He denied the Premium Protein troubles suggest the public doesn't care about identity preservation in its beef.

"No, I think actually, I think Americans do care about it," Sands said. "Certainly there are companies out there getting value out of it, and Premium Protein Products certainly, in many instances, was getting good value for it."

One problem for Premium Protein was the Japanese rule requiring beef imports to be from animals no more than 20 months old, Sands said. That reflected Japanese concerns about contracting mad cow disease from eating contaminated meat.

"I think we had lot of good things going, actually," Sands said, "but it was certainly a difficult environment for lot of businesses," he said.

Reach Art Hovey at 473-7223 or at ahovey@journalstar.com, and Richard Piersol at 473-7241 or at dpiersol@journalstar.com.