Depressed hog prices and an inability to absorb production losses has
forced the Prairie Swine Centre to sell its eight-year-old research
facility at Elstow, Sask.
Lee Whittington, PSC president and chief executive officer, said
ongoing losses associated with the facility’s hog production operations
resulted in a decision last year to empty the research barn, sell the
sow herd, eliminate five production-related positions and seek a buyer
for the facility.
Last week, the PSC announced that JSR Genetics Ltd., a British hog
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genetics company, had bought the barn for an undisclosed price.
“The PSC still exists,” said Whittington.
“We still run. We still have all of our researchers. What we don’t have now is that one barn….”
When the Elstow research barn was opened in March 2001, it was
described as a state-of-the art, farrow-to-finish unit that included
breeding and gestation facilities, an off-site nursery and grow-out
unit, and a 7,000-tonne feed mill.
It also housed a Pork Interpretive Gallery, complete with a
suspended, biosecure walkway that allowed visitors to view the inner
workings of a large-scale hog barn.
Construction of the project, originally estimated at $6 million, was funded in part by a $3 million grant from the province.
When hog prices tanked, the cost of running the facility placed an unmanageable burden on the PSC’s finances, Whittington said.
At full capacity, the 600-sow facility produced about 14,000 market hogs per year.
With production losses estimated at $30 to $50 per pig, annual
production losses were estimated at $420,000 to $700,000 per year.
“Our main goal is research on pigs, not the production of pigs,” Whittington said.
“Our objective (in selling the barn) was to reduce the burden of
being a major farm production unit under today’s market circumstances….”
Whittington said PSC directors were reluctant to sell the facility
when domestic hog prices are in the tank and barns are selling at fire
sale prices.
JSR Genetics was identified as a well-established company that has retained a bullish outlook on the hog industry, he added.
The company will house a nucleus breeding herd at the facility and
will use the unit as a centre of excellence for its genetic improvement
program.
It will also conduct research and training programs using its own researchers as well as PSC scientists.
“The Elstow nucleus will be connected to the U.K. and our other
nucleus units around the world … (and) will further accelerate genetic
improvement in our key traits,” said Grant Walling, the company’s
research and genetics director.
