LETHBRIDGE – After 40 years of business, the Lakeside family of companies has grown into a multimillion-dollar agricultural powerhouse in southern Alberta.
The operation started as a small, locally owned feedlot and commercial feedmill. In 1974, the company opened a packing plant that killed 35 head an hour.
Today, the plant handles 400 head per hour or 4,700 cattle per day, processing about one-third of Canada’s available slaughter cattle.
It shipped carcass beef and did not switch to a boxed operation until 1994, when the company was sold to IBP of the United States, said Lakeside Packers vice-president Brent Altwasser.
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The company wanted to expand in the early 1990s but without outside investment, its ambitions were stalled.
IBP made a $100 million investment to upgrade the boxed beef side and added a rendering facility.
When Tyson Foods bought IBP, the Brooks operation was part of the deal.
In addition to the plant, Lakeside operates one of Canada’s largest feedlots and a major farming operation. The IBP takeover aided an upgrade to a 75,000 head feedlot. The 200,000 cattle finished in the feedlot every year are killed at the Lakeside plant, making up 16 percent of its kill.
When the feedlot was expanded, water delivery and treatment were altered. The operation uses 2.5 to three million gallons of water per day from the Eastern Irrigation District.
Waste water is diverted to 90 acres of lagoons, which are used to irrigate crops on the company-owned farm where silage is produced for the feedlot. Feedlot manure also goes to the farm.
The company owns a fertilizer division with six outlets in Alberta, making it one of the province’s largest independent fertilizer retailers.
Lakeside is in the top third for volume among Tyson-owned companies. Tyson is based in Springdale, Arkansas, and owns 300 food processing facilities internationally.
