A huge investment in hog slaughter in Saskatchewan has not dimmed Maple Leaf Foods’ desire to also expand in Manitoba, said a company spokesperson last week.
Maple Leaf plans to spend $110 million to build a new hog slaughter plant in Saskatoon to replace the existing Mitchell’s facility. The new plant’s single shift capacity will be 20,000 head of hogs per week. It also said it would spend $50 million on its Saskatchewan pork processing operations in Saskatoon and North Battleford.
In Manitoba, hog producers are still awaiting a second shift at Maple Leaf’s slaughter and processing plant at Brandon. When built in the late 1990s, it was expected that a second shift would be added within a few years, doubling capacity to 90,000 head per week.
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The company remains committed to a second shift but that hinges on establishing markets for the additional pork that would be produced, said Jeanette Jones, director of communications for Maple Leaf Foods.
“We have no definite timeline to double shift Brandon,” she said. “We’re going to do it when the market conditions are right.”
In 2004, Manitoba produced 9.07 million pigs. Federally and provincially inspected plants in the province slaughtered 4.35 million and the rest were exported to the United States as slaughter or feeder pigs.
Manitoba producers are keen for a second shift at Brandon, especially in the wake of the recent trade action against exports of Canadian live hogs into the United States.
A group of American hog producers pressed for antidumping and countervailing duties, alleging the hogs were exported at below cost of production, causing injury to American producers.
The Canadian industry successfully defended itself, but another U.S. trade action seems inevitable, said Perry Mohr, Manitoba Pork Marketing Co-op chief executive officer. The next slump in hog prices could potentially ignite another trade skirmish, he said, noting that the only way to get off the Americans’ radar screen is to increase Manitoba’s capacity to finish and slaughter hogs. That would alleviate the need to ship live animals south.
“We produce enough hogs in Manitoba to support a second shift (at Brandon) quite nicely,” Mohr said.
“The problem is that we don’t finish them all here.”
