Alliance Grain Traders Inc., a Regina-based international pulse export company, plans to build a $50 million durum and pulse processing facility and pasta plant just outside city limits.
The plant will be located at the Global Transportation Hub, which already houses a food distribution company, trucking and logistics experts. It is expected to open in 2013.
The pasta will be marketed under the Arbella brand used by AGT in it business in Turkey. The company’s plant there sells pasta to more than 60 countries.
President and chief executive officer Murad Al-Katib said the facility would not have gone ahead had the federal government not moved on its promise to end the Canadian Wheat Board’s monopoly.
“Without the elimination of the single desk we would not build a pasta plant in Regina,” he told reporters.
Although the wheat board’s buy-back program doesn’t prevent pasta plants from operating, Al-Katib said his company relies on origin-based processing.
“We need to be able to buy raw material directly from our farmers, control our contracting programs, control the quality and the varieties that are going to be going into our mix,” he explained. “We’re selling a branded pasta product. It has to be the same every time we sell it.”
