Saskatchewan’s hog board is giving its loyal members $7 per pig for everything they sold through SPI Marketing Group between April 6 and the end of December 1998.
But producers who haven’t bought an “A” class share in the voluntary organization won’t receive any money.
“We wanted to do something to reward the producers who are with us and give those that haven’t committed a reason to buy in,” said SPI chair John Germs.
The approximately $5 million paid out to producers covers 700,000 hogs marketed through SPI by class A shareholders.
Read Also
Man charged after assault at grain elevator
RCMP have charged a 51-year-old Weyburn man after an altercation at the Pioneer elevator at Corinne, Sask. July 22.
SPI got the money from the recent Schneider Corp. purchase of part of the Mitchell’s Gourmet Foods packing plant in Saskatoon. Schneider paid SPI for about six percent of the company’s shares. SPI had owned about 16 percent of Mitchell’s.
SPI has kept some of the Schneider money. Germs would not say how much, but said it leaves SPI “very healthy as an organization.”
Germs said he hopes the payout convinces producers who have been reluctant to buy a class A share and commit their production to jump aboard the SPI bandwagon.
“This shows we’re doing what we’re supposed to be doing.”
