Buyers lined up | Entrepreneurs plan to build food packaging plant
Two entrepreneurs have bought a vacant plant in southern Manitoba and plan to process oats.
Frank Reimer, who owns Global Grain, an exporter of edible beans in Plum Coulee, Man., and his partner Edwin Guenther bought a bankrupt pulse plant in nearby Altona, Man., last year. Their oat plant, which will open in a few months, will be called Buffalo Creek Mills.
“We plan to start with stabilizing oat groats. The plan is to establish it as a healthy food producer and packager,” Reimer told Pembina Valley Online.
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“We are pursuing a market in Peru, but once you have the oat groats stabilized, you can basically ship them all over the world. We have buyers in South Korea and there are lots of small players in the Caribbean that will buy a stabilized oat groat for making oat flakes.”
The Altona plant had never been used.
A company from Pakistan, in partnership with towns and municipalities around Altona, began building the 25,000 sq. foot plant in 2008. It would eventually cost $3.2 million to build. However, the Pakistani company went bankrupt before the plant opened.
“You had a food grade building sitting there and it’s very discouraging, when month after month there’s no action,” said Don Wiebe, RM of Rhineland reeve.
Art Enns, a farmer and oat grower near Morris, Man., hasn’t heard much about Buffalo Creek Mills, but a new processing plant is welcome news for Manitoba’s oat industry.
“I really think we need all the oat processing we can get in the province,” said Enns, a Manitoba Oat Growers director.
“It’s no secret that oats are losing market share to other acres. Soybeans and corn are big crops coming up in Manitoba.”
Enns said oats are declining in Manitoba, and even he, as a Oat Growers director, has reduced acreage.
“It’s all about price,” he said.
“If you can get a good price, people will grow it…. With more (oat) processing and more demand… we may be able to get a (few) more acres.”
Enns said he will grow oats this spring but hasn’t decided on acreage.
