One year after Maple Leaf Foods closed its Edmonton hog slaughtering plant, the company’s opposition has plans to breathe new life into the property.
Fletcher’s Fine Foods will build a $12 million state-of-the-art bacon plant on the 47 acre site, said George Paleologou, vice-president and chief executive officer of Fletcher’s.
The company is in the final stages of negotiations with the province of Alberta which owns the site. Maple Leaf owned the building when it closed its door last year after unionized workers were locked out during a labor dispute with the company.
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Maple Leaf slaughtered hogs in the building, originally owned by Gainers. Fletcher’s will not kill hogs but will process pork bellies into
bacon. Fletcher’s slaughters 30,000 hogs a week at its Red Deer, Alta., facility and hopes to slaughter 40,000 hogs weekly as soon as possible.
As part of the deal the government will demolish the old slaughtering facility in Edmonton. The sale price was not disclosed. Fletcher’s will keep 27 acres of the site and the city will buy the other 20 acres for $1.
“We paid fair market value,” said Paleologou.
Edmonton beat out two American cities for the plant site because of its skilled workforce, low Canadian dollar and good location, he said.
The bacon was being processed at an older, leased facility in Portland, Oregon. An increasing demand for branded pork products prompted the company to find another location to process bacon.
The plant, which is expected to process more than a million pounds of bacon per week, is slated to open by November 1999. Demolition is already under way.
Roger Charbonneau, chair of the Alberta Pork Producers Development Corporation, said while the new plant won’t mean any more money for hog producers, it does give them confidence Fletcher’s is committed to Alberta.
“It’s good news. We’ll take what we can get,” said Charbonneau.
