Saskatchewan bison producers are celebrating their victory in the prairie-wide competition for a new slaughter plant.
The North American Bison Co-operative has picked North Battleford as the site for the Canadian plant it decided two years ago to build.
“The conventional wisdom was to put it in Alberta,” said Doug Griller, president of the Saskatchewan Bison Association.
“We did not care what the conventional wisdom was saying. We were going to bring NABC to Saskatchewan.”
The plant will not be built until there is enough supply to guarantee a profit for the co-op’s second plant, said Dave Giesbrecht, a Manitoba bison producer and the only Canadian director on the co-op’s board. But he said it will probably be built by 2004.
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The bison co-op now operates a slaughter plant in New Rockford, North Dakota. It kills about 12,500 animals per year, making it the biggest bison packer in the world. It is a new generation co-operative, owned wholly by bison producers.
Each share gives a producer the right and obligation to deliver one animal per year to the plant. Producers in 22 U.S. states and Canadian provinces own shares.
The NABC has just released 7,500 more shares that must be sold before the co-op begins building the new plant. Griller expects Saskatchewan producers to buy about half of the new offering. He said he has been told the Saskatchewan facility will probably be at least as large as the New Rockford plant.
Giesbrecht said the bison co-op picked North Battleford mainly because it lies at the centre of the buffalo belt of Alberta and Saskatchewan. Most producers would be within 10 hours shipping time of the new plant. Many producers now have to ship their animals for up to 20 hours to reach the New Rockford plant.
Griller said Saskatchewan producers worked hard to convince the bison co-op to locate its plant in Saskatchewan rather than Alberta. Saskatchewan has about 18,000 bison. Alberta has twice as many.
Not only did Saskatchewan producers lobby the co-op, they also convinced the Canadian Bison Association to relocate from Winnipeg to Regina, supported the creation of a bison research program at the University of Saskatchewan, and helped design a $3 million specialty livestock facility to support the bison sale at Canadian Western Agribition in Regina.
Alberta has half of all the bison in Canada. But Saskatchewan’s herd is growing the fastest, a factor Saskatchewan Bison Association executive director Leon Brin thinks convinced the bison co-op to locate in the province.
“About a year ago, we started to hear (from them) that Saskatchewan had the highest potential for growth,” said Brin.
Griller said Saskatchewan producers want to be part of the co-op because keeping control of bison meat is key to producers getting the most value from their animals.
Giesbrecht said the co-op won’t steal markets from other small Canadian packers. The bison co-op sells all of its meat to restaurants and hotels, not grocery stores.
While producers await the opening of the North Battleford plant in four or five years, the co-op might arrange to have shareholders’ animals slaughtered at other plants, Giesbrecht said.
