Summer jobs during his university years convinced Bruce Campbell that he did not want to work for government nor in lumber camps.
So, when he graduated with a degree in agriculture in 1958, he looked for another way to apply his skills.
The career that beckoned was in livestock feed. It would take Campbell to the forefront of feed manufacturing and in the establishment of Elite Swine, one of the largest hog production companies in Canada.
These accomplishments will be recognized his summer when Campbell is inducted into the Manitoba Agricultural Hall of Fame.
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His career began when he was hired by Feed-Rite and became the company’s territory manager based in Winnipeg. Campbell worked for Feed-Rite for 10 years, gaining insight about the industry while at the same time contemplating whether he wanted to remain an employee for the rest of his working life.
In 1968, he became an employer.
Driven by the belief that he needed to become a businessperson if he was ever going to build equity, he became partners with Jake Wolgemuth in what was then known as Landmark Feed Mill Ltd. in Landmark, Man.
The company was renamed Landmark Feeds Inc. and would eventually grow to include eight large modern feed production facilities in Manitoba and Alberta. It also became the foundation for a large hog production network.
“It was a great opportunity,” said Campbell, who embraced the chance to become an entrepreneur. “It was exciting and there was always something happening.”
When buying other feed mills, he and Wolgemuth adopted a strategy of including managers in the ownership. The manager of each mill they bought was included as a partner in that mill. That helped to ensure quality staff were not lured away by higher salaries offered by competitors. The arrangement worked well and there was never a partnership that went awry.
“It was a wonderful way to get total participation and total commitment,” Campbell said.
His partnership remained until 1976, at which time Wolgemuth left the business to farm at Swan River, Man.
The company continued growing, however, eventually becoming larger in scope than Feed-Rite. It expanded into Alberta in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when three feed mills were bought.
In the earlier years, the company had been driven largely by demand for poultry feed. Landmark Feeds began placing greater emphasis on supplying swine rations.
In the early 1990s, the company began investing with partners in hog barn enterprises. The reasoning was straightforward: “If you’re expanding the hog business, you’re expanding the feed business,” Campbell said.
The hog production company was named Elite Swine Inc. It featured the innovation of locating barns on multiple sites, so that the farrowing barns, nurseries and finishing barns were separate from one another. The main aim was to manage disease risk and to provide specialized care of the pigs.
By the late 1990s, Elite Swine was one of the largest hog production companies in Canada. However, it had reached a crossroads.
Campbell said there was a need to expand into hog slaughtering and processing, which would have meant borrowing a lot of money, making the venture a publicly traded company, or selling to someone else. He decided to sell.
In 1999, Landmark Feeds and Elite Swine were sold to Maple Leaf Foods, which had a large appetite for prairie hogs, due largely to the construction of its $120 million hog processing plant at Brandon. At full capacity on a single shift, the plant processes 45,000 hogs per week.
Campbell had some reservations about parting with Landmark Feeds and Elite Swine, but he became convinced they would be going to good hands.
“You had misgivings, but at the end of the day you went with what was right for the industry and what was right for the company and employees.”
He believes the success of the Landmark Feeds and Elite Swine was based on valuing employees and adopting the philosophy that a company becomes successful by making its customers successful.
“It was just a great thrill,” said Campbell, looking back on the more than 30 years that he spent in business. “You had to count your blessings every morning.”
