It can be hard to keep up with the Joneses.
And when the Joneses are a major corporate competitor with millions in assets, it could be even harder.
Then again, if your name is Louis Dreyfus Mitsui and the Joneses are James Richardson International, keeping up with the Joneses mostly consists of putting up a canola plant in Yorkton, Sask.
Brent German is project manager for the 850,000 tonne LDM crushing plant, located just across a new set of railway tracks from a similar project being undertaken by JRI.
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He’s been on the job for about four months and he admitted to a group of farm writers last week that it’s hard not to notice activity on the other side of the tracks and compare his progress against that of the 840,000 tonne JRI plant.
After all, the two sites are within sight of each other, in what surely has to be one of the most unusual competitive construction projects ever seen in Western Canada.
German says he believes there are only one or two other places in the world where two such similar plants will operate so closely together as competitors.
Of course, the projects aren’t completely parallel. German’s goal is to have the LDM plant at “substantial completion” on June 1, 2009, and at full production by Sept. 1, 2009. JRI has an anticipated completion date in the second quarter of 2010.
Still, it must give the LDM folks satisfaction – and Yorkton area farmers comfort – to see a crane on site and to watch three storage bins rising against the prairie sky.
The bins will each hold about half a million bushels of canola, and each bin will hold about four days worth of production for the hungry plant. There’s room for five more similar bins on site, says German.
The former Kansas farm boy is clearly used to queries about availability of canola supply in the region once two plants are running, but he isn’t easily drawn into a discussion about it.
Instead he mentions Yorkton’s advantages in terms of rail and highway access, as well as canola acreage.
German first saw canola about seven years ago. His experience has mostly been with soybean plants. His assessment of prairie seas of yellow flowers?
“It’s a beautiful crop,” he says. “The opportunity to be involved with a true green field plant doesn’t come around that often.”
Green field is a reference to starting a plant from the ground up.
German clearly doesn’t mind keeping up with the Joneses so far, especially since he’s ahead. It will be interesting to watch these two projects as they progress.
