HUMBOLDT, Sask. – Silence has settled like fine white flour dust on whirring motors and belts that power the flour mill here.
But when the mill reopens in August after $100,000-$150,000 in refurbishment, there will be more activity than ever as production doubles.
The expansion is vital to the survival of the mill. The three-storey plant might tower over Humboldt Flour Mills Inc. head office site, but it accounts for only about five percent of the company’s business.
“We wrestled with the decision whether to shut the mill down or continue,” said Dave Eberle, head of Humboldt Flour Mills investor relations and overseer of mill operations.
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The challenge is how to make an 85-year tradition of flour milling fit with a corporation rapidly building a reputation as an exporter of special crops and supplier of farm inputs, he said.
HFM founder Wilf Chamney had worked at the McNab Flour Mill which opened in Humboldt in 1913. It burned down in 1956 and Chamney moved in a different direction, pioneering mustard seed production in Saskatchewan.
But in 1961, he bought a mill in Shaunavon, Sask., and moved it to Humboldt, about 150 kilometres east of Saskatoon.
The mill prospered for a time, selling its product under the name Supreme Flour, but business declined in recent years while HFM grew into the largest mustard seed exporter in Canada.
Something had to be done, said Eberle.
“Partly out of respect for Wilf, we wanted to make a stab at making it more of a part of the operation as opposed to cutting it off,” he said.
But HFM is a public company traded on the Alberta Stock Exchange and nostalgia doesn’t cut it with shareholders who want a profit. The most likely way to make money is niche marketing, he said.
“In this country we are going to wind up with three or four giants of the milling industry, but I still think there is room for the little guy. We don’t want to compete with the big boys,” Eberle said, noting organic grain milling is one option being studied.
HFM took advantage of the closure of the B.P. Kent flour mill in Virden, Man., last year to buy some of its equipment and hire its manager.
Even after the work, the mill will be small – a throwback to earlier days when wood was the construction material of choice and an elaborate belt system carried a central motor’s power throughout the plant.
But capacity will increase to about 32 bushels an hour from 26 and the facility will move to 24-hour operation from about 10 hours.
HFM has also taken on Bill Kent, who owned the Virden mill, as marketing consultant.
Kent says the strength of the HFM mill is its flexibility.
“Just because you are small doesn’t mean you are not competitive, particularly that you don’t make quality product.”
Companies that dominate the Canadian flour milling industry, Archer Daniels Midland, Robin Hood Multifoods and Maple Leaf, have big mills designed to make large quantities of a few products, he said.
“They can’t make 500 bags of a special product. It just costs them too much money. But small operators can do that and not lose money. So there is a place for them.”
