The vacant pork slaughterhouse formerly known as Great Lakes Specialty Meats is now expected to restart as a turkey processing plant by year’s end.
Meat processor Sofina Foods bought the 78,000-square foot plant and property at Mitchell, Ont., about 60 km west of Kitchener, for $4.77 million last September, after Great Lakes entered receivership in June.
Markham, Ont.-based Sofina — which operates 17 other plants across Canada, one U.S. plant and three hatcheries and produces branded and private-label pork, beef, turkey, and chicken — announced Thursday it expects to commission the plant for turkeys in “late 2015” but hasn’t yet set an official start date.
Read Also
U.S. livestock: Cattle futures come down from highs
Cattle futures on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange were weaker on Monday, coming down from recent highs.
Great Lakes, which was processing up to 5,000 hogs per week at Mitchell, declared bankruptcy in October. Sister companies Quality Meat Packers and Toronto Abattoirs were both deemed bankrupt in May.
Company officials were quoted in reports at the time citing volatility in hog prices as a factor, after porcine epidemic diarrhea (PED) arrived in the U.S. and Canada.
In Sofina’s release Thursday, Jeff McDowell, vice-president for Sofina’s poultry value chain operations, described the move as “the largest single investment in the Canadian turkey industry in over 25 years.”
“Evolutionary”
Bringing the Mitchell plant online as a turkey plant is “evolutionary” to the company’s current poultry slaughter operations at Dublin, Ont., just west of Mitchell, McDowell said.
“The Mitchell facility provides Sofina Foods with the ability to provide fresh turkey to our further processing operations in London and Brampton ,” he said, and “confirms our commitment to the Ontario turkey industry, and Ontario turkey farmers.”
Sofina has been on an expansion track since the mid-1990s, taking over Vienna Meat Products in 1995, followed by Quality Meat Packers’ plant in Brampton in 2001 and London-based Cuddy Food Products in 2003.
The company’s business doubled in size when it bought Vancouver-based Fletcher’s Fine Foods in 2004 and again when it took over Edmonton poultry processor Lilydale’s operations in Western Canada for $130 million in 2010. In 2012 it bought Janes Family Foods, Santa Maria Foods and Fearmans Pork for undisclosed sums.
Sofina’s roster of retail meat brands now includes Lilydale chicken and turkey, Janes chicken and fish, Fearmans fresh pork, Fletcher’s beef, pork, celi meats and sausages, Mastro salami, San Daniele Italian-style deli meats, Cuddy deli-style chicken and turkey, Vienna deli-style beef and pork and Quality Meats ham, among others. — AGCanada.com Network
