Canada’s largest grain company is ramping up its investment in the dry bean sector.
Agricore United is replacing its 24-year-old processing plant in Carman, Man., with a new facility featuring more processing capacity.
“It puts us, I would say, as being one of several companies that are involved in beans in a pretty serious way across Canada,” said special crops manager Blair Roth.
Construction of the new plant will begin as soon as possible and conclude in 2005. There will be no breaks in processing between the startup of the new facility and the demise of the old one.
Read Also
Research looks to control flea beetles with RNAi
A Vancouver agri-tech company wants to give canola growers another weapon in the never-ending battle against flea beetles.
Roth declined to divulge how many more tonnes the new facility will be capable of handling. The product focus will continue to be navy and pinto beans, two crops grown extensively throughout the province.
That’s music to the ears of Don Sissons, president of the Manitoba Pulse Growers Association Inc.
“We’ve experienced a lot of our bean production being exported unprocessed out of the area.”
Agricore’s investment shows a long-term commitment to Manitoba’s bean industry, sending a positive signal to the province’s growers, he said.
“Farmers are going to respond with more production when these types of initiatives occur.”
The industry has already undergone rapid expansion. According to Statistics Canada’s latest estimate, growers seeded 280,000 acres this year, nearly three times what went in the ground in 1998. Manitoba is the country’s top bean growing province.
Sissons said expanding and modernizing the province’s processing sector is a logical step.
“It’s a very positive thing to have the people that are performing processing just that much closer to where the raw product is being produced.”
Agricore United has two facilities in Alberta, in Taber and Bow Island. The company evolved with the industry in that province, but is a recent entrant into the Manitoba market, purchasing the Carman plant in 1999.
“We’re kind of spreading our wings a little bit and becoming established in the Manitoba marketplace,” said Roth.
The main consideration for building a new plant was that it was time for an upgrade. But another factor is the anticipation about what’s going to happen in Mexico with quotas and tariffs slated to disappear under the North American Free Trade Agreement in 2008.
Canada faces a stiff 46.9 percent tariff on bean shipments to Mexico that exceed its 2004 quota of 2,016 tonnes. In 2008, there will be no quota or tariff, which means the sky is the limit.
Exporters attending the 2003 Canadian Special Crops Association convention felt that once the barriers are removed, bean trade with Mexico could easily exceed $30 million.
Roth isn’t holding his breath.
“We all see where NAFTA is supposed to hit but whether the Mexican government determines that to be a direction they want to head, we’ll have to wait and see.”
Whether or not Mexico is in the game, Roth expects 85 percent of the beans coming out of the Carman facility will be destined for export markets.
