Western Canada’s poultry industry had too many of its eggs in one basket and had to find “someplace to diversify out of the B.C.’s lower mainland.”
So Prairie Pride Natural Foods Ltd. announced plans last week to build a $15 million chicken processing facility in Saskatoon.
In looking for place to expand, poultry businessperson Bruce Arabsky was shocked by the opportunity in Saskatchewan.
“Where was Saskatchewan’s chicken production? Saskatchewan left huge amounts of (supply managed) allocation on the national table. We couldn’t understand why. It’s a natural fit for the province. So we’re setting up shop,” said the new director of operations for the privately held Saskatchewan company.
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Arabsky was at the centre of the poultry industry’s greatest turmoil as export sales manager for Superior Poultry of Coquitlam, B.C., during that province’s avian flu outbreak and poultry cull of 19 million birds.
Poultry processors in the region lost an estimated $20 million in inventory plus the costs of filling meat contracts. The B.C. industry as a whole lost $850 million in sales.
Arabsky said those losses reinforced the need to spread out the industry geographically.
“Saskatchewan has natural biosecurity with its low bird stocking numbers and space between facilities. In many ways it is much better suited in the event of a health problem like avian flu.”
The plant Arabsky and his mainly B.C. investor board of directors plan to set up will pack and process 600,000 birds per week in a new 38,000 sq. metre facility in a north Saskatoon industrial park.
“Again it makes sense. We can locate a plant far more cheaply in Saskatoon than in B.C.’s lower mainland. Because it is in an industrial park, we won’t be having houses or livestock auctions being set up next to us,” he said.
To ensure that local chicken producers can fill the Prairie Pride packing facility, the company will also set up a hatchery in Grandora, Sask.
“That, too, is remote. No other feather production around for miles. Great for a hatchery.”
Company officials say Saskatchewan poultry production has been depressed for several years and they feel with some expansion of current farms and with filling the existing barns, the supply of birds should be adequate.
Saskatchewan doesn’t use all of its domestic consumption quota allocation, nor does it use any of its export allocation. That can be as high as 14 percent of domestic use.
“We plan to tap into that area as well,” said Arabsky.
“Twenty years ago the poultry industry in Canada was local. Ten years ago it was regional. Now it is managed nationally between Calgary and Toronto. Saskatoon can ship fresh in either direction and south,” he said.
The plant, producing whole birds without giblets, cut-up fresh and frozen packages and branded private label products, will employ up to 250 people when it opens in September 2005. Construction is expected to begin in January.
