Saskatchewan Wheat Pool created a new company last week that it hopes will feed the growing livestock industry across the Prairies and around the world.
Cangro Processors will provide the missing link in Sask Pool’s strategy to expand hog production in Western Canada, said Cangro chief operating officer Les Rankin.
Operating as a subsidiary under Sask Pool’s grain group, Cangro plans to build, buy or partner with existing companies in the feed business to become a main prairie livestock feed supplier, Rankin said.
“We will be an aggressive company and we will be growing quickly.”
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Sask Pool’s Heartland Livestock Services, which plans to produce one million hogs a year in large-scale integrated barns across the Prairies, prompted the creation of the new company. But it won’t stop there, Rankin said.
The first feed mill, estimated to be a $6 million, 100,000 tonne facility, will be located in northwestern Saskatchewan.
Once a base is established on the Prairies, Cangro will be eyeing up potential national, North American and global markets, said Bruce Johnson, executive vice-president of Sask Pool’s grain group.
“Where opportunities arise and it plugs into an existing livestock market, we’ll look at those kinds of opportunities,” Johnson said, adding the mills will also produce cattle and chicken feed.
Vern Racz, a nutrition specialist with the department of animal and food science at the University of Saskatchewan, said the expansion indicates the domestic feed industry in Canada is making a comeback.
Not exporting as much
“To me this is an emerging and growing industry not only just from global demand for feed but we’re also going to see an increased demand from our own livestock industry,” he said.
“With the freight rate assistance, we have been exporting those opportunities out of the province in the past.”
Cangro’s business plan is still in the works, but Rankin said producers who have joint interest in Heartland’s hog operations will have an opportunity to buy into feed mills that serve their barns.
The facilities will likely be run as co-operatives, Johnson said, with Cangro retaining majority ownership.
