They’ve got the people, the place and the plan. Now all they need is $2 million.
“The time is right to get this going,” said Don Declercq, treasurer of the Pine Cree Cattle Co.
Declercq said the group will go ahead with its feedlot project in the Shaunavon area of southwestern Saskatchewan as soon as it raises two-thirds of the $3.5 million the project requires.
Declercq said the investment drive isn’t finished yet.
“Not as good as we would like, but we’re making progress. That’s kind of our hurdle right now, to get the funds, the capital raised so we can proceed with construction this spring.”
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The dry growing season in the region didn’t help much either, he added.
The group wants the first phase of an eventual 25,000-head feedlot in operation by the fall of 2007. But raising money in southwestern Saskatchewan is a struggle, he said.
“You got a limited population to raise capital from and there’s been lots of excellent projects out there trying to develop, so that makes that cash pool spread out a little bit more,” he said.
Great Western Railway was one of those projects. The local group raised $6 million and in late 2004 purchased a short-line railway. Other local projects are still ongoing.
Cypress Agri Energy Inc., a group that consists of more than 90 local shareholders, plans to build a $100 million ethanol plant in Shaunavon. Great West Beef and Bison Co. is planning a $20 million beef packing plant in Swift Current.
Declercq said that if just one of these projects was to materialize, the effects would be positive for the others.
“If we can locally feed and then ship to a local slaughterhouse, the economic diversity of that in southwest Saskatchewan is just phenomenal,” he said.
There would also be mutual benefit between the ethanol plant and the feedlot. The ethanol process produces a wet distillers mash that could be sold to the feedlot and fed to cattle.
“The ethanol plant would be the crown and glory down here as far as development. That would make a world of difference for getting our project off the ground too,” he said.
“We’d see some real boom down here.”
If the money can be raised, the first phase of the feedlot will be a 9,000 head operation.
Pine Cree formed in the fall of 2001, about a year and a half before BSE hit Canadian cattle producers. Fundraising was at a standstill for about two years, Declercq said.
“You can’t get discouraged by the time either. We’re four years into five, but in the terms of it, that’s not out of the ordinary to get something like this going. It takes that kind of time,” he said.
