The largest chicken and turkey processor in Manitoba is planning to move its corporate headquarters and broiler chick hatchery to a new location in the Transcona neighborhood of Winnipeg.
However, the plan has not been
finalized. Granny’s Poultry Co-operative (Manitoba) Ltd. still has to meet with city officials and take care of some infrastructure issues before it sits down with the property owners.
“Nothing will happen if we don’t buy this property,” said Wayne Morrison, chief operating officer.
The tentative plan is to sell the old headquarters and hatchery on Scurfield Boulevard, then build a new 3,150 sq. metre facility on the edge of the CN Rail Transcona Yards.
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“Over the years, our volumes have increased and we need the additional space for the hatchery,” Morrison said.
Careful to avoid the kind of negative outcry that greeted OlyWest’s planned pork slaughter facility in Saint Boniface Industrial Park, Granny’s Poultry has taken steps to inform residents in the area of its plans.
“Every time the word plant is used in the context of this hatchery, people get a little nervous,” he said. “We had an open house for all the folks around the area where this proposed purchase may take place. We’ve been very open and transparent to them, and we’ve explained to them what we’re all about and what a hatchery is all about.”
Morrison said public response has been generally positive.
“I think they were comfortable after we had a chance to explain to them what a hatchery is all about. It’s a very benign operation. You can’t even compare it to things like a hog plant. Aesthetically, I think we’ll add to the piece of land that’s there.”
Morrison said the proposed new site would feature an attractive building with landscaped features, rather than a vacant piece of land.
“Currently, the land is graded for heavy industry. We’re hoping to downgrade it to light industry. We’re taking it in a positive direction, as far as the neighbours are concerned.”
Granny’s own trucks handle the pickup of hatching eggs and delivery of chicks. Therefore, the most area residents might notice is three or four additional trucks and employee cars on the street, he said.
The old location has been in use since 1989. The hatchery will account for two-thirds of the space in the new building, while offices will occupy the rest.
The company, which boasts state-of-the-art equipment for carefully screening eggs and maintaining optimum hatching conditions, plans to install upgraded equipment at the new location.
“We’re looking at a couple of suppliers, but that hasn’t been completely finalized,” he said. Morrison declined to discuss details, such as hatching egg capacity.
Expansion has been ongoing for several years now at the company’s poultry processing facility in Blumenort, Man., which in July 2005 received a $900,000 rural infrastructure development grant from the provincial government.
The upgrades at the processing
facility, worth $4.5 million, involved mainly equipment changes, including high-speed deboning machines, additional overwrap capacity for a packaging line and more capacity for the turkey line.
