Western Canada Lamb Cooperative plans to find enough producers to fill a cattle liner and send it to Ontario or Quebec
It’s been a turbulent year for Alberta lamb producers following the financial collapse of the North American Lamb Company and subsequent questions surrounding handling capacity at its former facility in Innisfail, Alta.
Now, a new co-op has formed to ship lamb to eastern facilities to secure what organizers say are better prices.
The premise of the Western Canada Lamb Cooperative is simple: find enough sheep producers to fill a cattle liner and send it to Ontario or Quebec.
Vice-chair of the new co-op, Claude Durupt, said the idea is based on market fundamentals.
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“You never seem to make as much money on your lambs in the West as you do in the East,” he said, adding some order buyers are purchasing solely for that purpose. “So, we said let’s try to keep some of this money in our hands instead of the order buyers, packing houses, the feedlots and everybody else. Let’s see what we can do to retain some of the net profit.”
Durupt said the co-op isn’t about buying or selling lambs on its own; it’s simply trying to facilitate transportation.
“There’s cost to that but there is still money to be made on our part doing that,” he said.
“It almost doesn’t matter how many sheep you have. The big producers with 1,500 ewes or the little producers with 50 ewes, you cannot produce enough lamb to fill a liner to head east. You just don’t have that many at one time.”
Durupt said the co-op wants participation from all producers so it can co-ordinate shipments of 400 animals that can be collected at central locations and loaded for transport.
“They leave here on Thursday, they get to Ontario on Sunday after an overnight stop,” he said, adding they’re processed by the Monday.
Quebec-based Préval Ag has bought the processing facility in Innisfail but Durupt said whether it will be able to handle all the available lamb will come down to timing.
“If they can take them and if you can get them in, that’s all great. But if you can’t get them in or they are busy doing their own contracts, then your lambs get too big and then when you do bring them in, then they dock you because they are overweight,” he said.
That situation puts lamb producers in a bind and it’s been an issue throughout Durupt’s three decades in the Alberta sheep sector.
“What we’re trying to do is level the playing field for producers big and small with no exceptions,” he said.
In the few weeks since its launch, Durupt said they’ve garnered a lot of attention and shipped the co-op’s first load in the first week of April.
“We’re not taking anything out of your pockets. You have to pay for your freight to get them there and that’s where co-ops shine because everybody is working together,” he said. “There’s a wide space for a good profit margin on them.”
More information on the Western Lamb Cooperative can be found at westcanlamb.com.
