Long lineups of trucks loaded with sugar beets can be a common sight in southern Alberta at piling stations during fall harvest season.
Sugar beets are delivered by truck to several stations where they are weighed and piled. Drivers can face long waits to unload during peak times and the Alberta Sugar Beet Growers board wants to make the process more efficient.
“The piling equipment we are working with comes back from the 1950s,” said ASBG president Arnie Bergen-Henengouwen during the growers’ annual meeting March 6.
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“Our grandparents worked with it, or parts of it. We just feel it’s important, from the growers’ perspective (to upgrade). We’ve invested in harvest efficiency and we want to get the crop off in good condition in as short a period of time as we can, and we feel there’s benefits to the company and there’s also benefits to the grower.”
All Alberta sugar beets are processed at the Rogers sugar factory in Taber owned by Lantic Sugar. The beets are grown under contract to Lantic, which operates the piling stations as well as the factory. Upgrades to piling equipment would thus have to involve Lantic.
Sugar beet growers in the Vauxhall region analyzed wait times this year and concluded that a return on investment in new piling equipment could be realized if two minutes could be shaved off the wait times for every load.
Bergen-Henengouwen said many growers have invested in more efficient harvest equipment over time. If they pay custom haulers, costs can mount if they wait for long periods at piling stations with inefficient equipment.
“If (truckers) are getting paid by the tonne, they’re not very happy about it,” he said of wait times. “Ourselves, our operation pays truckers by the hour and if they’re sitting there, it’s costly.”
The ASBG hired a consultant to analyze the harvest process and provide recommendations to improve efficiency.
Growers are coming off a record year for sugar beet yields. The top grower, Pedro Giesbrecht of Vauxhall, Alta., realized 37.96 tonnes per acre in 2018.
The ASBG and Lantic agreed to a two-year contract extension last year, extending through 2020. Bergen-Henengouwen said that gives the ASBG and Lantic some time to develop a long-term rolling contract, which he said would have cost-of-production as a base.
“This won’t be an easy process but we feel … with a little dialogue from both sides we believe we can get there,” he said.
