YA Group announced the acquisition of the business of J.M. Reagan Consulting (JMR), a multidisciplinary consulting business specializing in property damage consulting and construction claims.
The strategic acquisition strengthens YA’s presence in Texas and enhances its ability to deliver comprehensive building consulting services to clients in the insurance sector.
JMR, founded in 2017, and headquartered in Houston, Texas, provides property damage consulting, construction claims consulting, program & project management, and dispute resolution to insurance carriers. The firm’s experienced team will join YA’s Construction Consulting practice, enabling both organizations to expand capacity, accelerate response times, and deliver greater value to clients.
Through this acquisition, JMR’s clients will gain access to YA’s full suite of capabilities, including builder’s risk, pre-loss assessment, clerking, and surety as well as a full range of forensic engineering and architecture services.
Tyson Foods Inc., the country’s biggest meatpacker, underscored the difficulties for the industry last month as it announced it would close Nebraska beef plant and reduce operations to one shift at a facility in Texas roughly 450 miles from the Mexican border.
At least one other big plant and several more regional ones could close in the next 18 months as a result of the ongoing supply pressures, said Hyrum Egbert, an expert who has worked in the beef industry for nearly two decades. The pressures are likely to be more pronounced in the South, where plants typically source some live cattle from Mexico, but “I don’t think that anybody is exempt from it right now,” he said.
The Trump administration has been tackling record beef prices with a bevy of actions, including the recent lifting of steep tariffs on Brazilian shipments. Yet even as beef imports are projected to jump 15% this year to satisfy American’s appetite for the protein, they still only account for about 17% of the country’s supply, according to the US Department of Agriculture. And most of those supplies are lean trimmings that get blended with US meat for ground beef.
That’s why many see the southern border as key to bringing down the price of steak, as shipments from Mexico would involve live cattle.
When talking about cuts of meat other than ground beef, “that’s going to require the opening of the southern border,” said Darin Parker, president of meat distributor PMI Foods. Removing the ban is “a consequential move the administration could make,” he said.