WINNIPEG (Staff) – The Simplot plant at Brandon, Man. will soon be home to an industrial-grade ammonium nitrate plant from Minnesota.
A Simplot Canada official said Continental Nitrogen and Resources Corp. of Rosemount, Minn. will spend $33 million over the next year to upgrade and move a plant to Brandon.
Several months ago Simplot announced it would be tripling its ammonia production to 1,250 tonnes per day by April 1997.
“It ties in with our overall major expansion that we announced back in October. It will just sort of diversify for us, it gives us another market,” said Reid.
Lumbard said until now, the Brandon plant has produced ammonia for agricultural use only. The Continental plant should give Simplot a stable industrial market, producing 140,000 tonnes of ammonium nitrate each year.
The plant serves customers in the iron industry in the upper midwestern United States, and coal and metal mining industries in the western U.S. and Canada.
Lumbard said the agreement will mean more spin-off jobs in industries like trucking, although it may only directly employ an additional five or six people.
