Hog production giant Hytek is turning its back on a slaughter plant planned for Winnipeg and instead will buy and expand the Springhill Farms killing plant in Neepawa, Man.
Guy Baudry, vice-president of business development, said Hytek bought the Springhill plant for an undisclosed sum and intends to spend $35 million boosting the plant’s daily kill to 4,000, up from 3,400, and add 200 more jobs.
“It’s a whole combination of things that is going to allow us to do that primary, secondary and further value adding at the plant,” said Baudry.
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Hytek is Canada’s largest privately owned hog production company and the second largest in terms of production with 66,000 sows producing 1.5 million hogs per year.
“It’s going to be business-as-usual for the current suppliers,” he added. “For us, augmenting our production with processing is something we have been looking to do for the last couple of years.”
Two years ago, Quebec-based Olymel Ltd., Big Sky Farms Inc. and Hytek, announced plans to build a $200 million slaughter and processing plant on Winnipeg’s east side, which would have created 1,100 jobs in the city.
Dogged by opposition from residents in the area, which caused the province to abandon its support for the project in the middle of an election campaign, Hytek was faced with the prospect of going it alone after its two partners pulled out.
Now, however, Hytek plans to withdraw its application to build the Winnipeg plant early next year, once it completes its acquisition of the Springhill plant, which was founded in 1986 by a group of Hutterite colonies.
Apart from sales of live breeding animals, Hytek’s production has in recent years been going to other processors and to the United States. Opening its own processing channel could provide relief for the company amid a vicious down cycle, driven by a Canadian dollar valued at par or higher than the U.S. dollar and high feed costs.
The move by Hytek, which is based in La Broquerie, Man., comes during a provincial government moratorium on hog industry expansion.
“We are heavily invested from a capital and staff perspective throughout Manitoba,” he said. “We do look forward to that moratorium being removed from the industry.”
Meanwhile, officials at Springhill welcomed the investment.
“We are very excited that Hytek has agreed to purchase our Neepawa-based food processing facility and that they intend to take the plant to the next level,” said Mack Wollmann, past president and co-founder of Springhill Farms.
