Canada Bread, the Canadian arm of Mexican baking giant Grupo Bimbo, announced Monday it had completed its deal to buy Stonemill Bakehouse Ltd. for an undisclosed sum.

Stonemill is billed as a leading producer of slow-fermented craft breads baked in stone ovens using “100 per cent natural, non-GMO-certified and organic ingredients.” The company produces breads in small, 200-kg dough batches and allows its doughs to ferment for up to 24 hours.

Stonemill produces its own grains at its farm in Prince Edward County, near Belleville, and contracts with growers in the area for organic rye and spelt.

The craft baking firm has said on its website it aims to have 2,000 acres under contract by 2018 for “sustainable, GMO-free, Ontario-grown grains.”

Stonemill, which has about 100 employees, operates a production facility in Scarborough and a store at St. Lawrence Market in Toronto.

Canada Bread said Monday the Stonemill deal will position it for “further growth, complementing its current product portfolio and its distribution and manufacturing footprint.”

Toronto-based Canada Bread, whose major brands include Dempster’s, Villaggio, Pom, Bon Matin, Ben’s, McGavins and Vachon, was majority-owned by Maple Leaf Foods until its takeover by Bimbo in 2014. — AGCanada.com Network

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The company, an arm of Mexican bakery firm Grupo Bimbo since 2014, announced Tuesday it will close its bakery at St-Come-Liniere, about 110 km southeast of Quebec City, effective May 19.

“We have been losing volume year-over-year in this facility and have made every effort to maintain the facility,” Jennifer Park, Canada Bread’s vice-president of operations, said in a release.

“As a result, we must consolidate the volume into another bakery in Quebec where we bake the same products and have the capacity to take on this volume.”

About 56 people working at the plant will get severance and “will also be encouraged to seek employment at other Canada Bread facilities,” the company said.

The company also said Tuesday it will move roll-line production from a Quebec City-area bakery at Beauport to a bakery in the Vincent-Massey area of Quebec City in September.

The “majority of associates” working at Beauport are expected tp transfer to Vincent-Massey by March 2018, when roll production is dialed up to meet summer peak demand.

Canada Bread, whose brands include Bon Matin, Vachon, Ben’s, Pom, Villaggio and Dempster’s, today operates 17 bakeries across the country, counting the St-Come-Liniere site. The company closed a bakery at North Bay, Ont. last summer and its Ben’s Bakery facility in Halifax in 2015.

It emphasized in its release that bread baked at St-Come-Liniere and rolls baked at Beauport will still be baked in Quebec. “Jobs and production will not be moved to other parts of Canada or other countries.”

The exception, Canada Bread said, will be one specific Panini product line, the production of which will be “absorbed” within the network of Wholesome Harvest Baking, a Grupo Bimbo-owned company making frozen and par-baked goods for retailers and in-store bakeries. — AGCanada.com Network

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The company announced Wednesday it will begin to gradually wind down operations, transfer the plant’s work to its other bakeries in Quebec and Ontario and shut down the bakery effective Aug. 5.

The 30,000-square foot bakery, formerly known as City Bakery, produces buns, rolls and sliced breads and employs 62 staff.

Employees will be “encouraged” to seek jobs at Canada Bread’s 18 other plants and will also get severance, counselling and other “outplacement” services, the company said.

“Our industry is under mounting competitive pressure to become more efficient and this means we have to make very difficult decisions,” Jennifer Park, the company’s vice-president of operations, said in a release.

“While this is the business reality, it is hard to make the necessary changes, particularly in a community where we have such a strong presence.”

United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 175, which represents 52 of the North Bay plant’s staff, on Thursday cited a company document listing “the age of the facility (and) the investment required to update it, along with the ability to produce the same product lines more efficiently at other existing facilities” as reasons for the closure.

Canada Bread had owned the North Bay plant since 2001, when it bought 100 per cent control of Quebec baked goods firm Multi-Marques and its brands such as Bon Matin and POM.

Canada Bread, whose other brands include Dempster’s, Villaggio, Ben’s, Healthy Way, McGavins and Vachon, last year also shut down its Ben’s Bakery plant in Halifax and farmed out most of the plant’s work to other Canada Bread facilities at Moncton and Woodstock, N.B.

Bimbo has owned Etobicoke, Ont.-based Canada Bread since mid-2014, when it bought full control from majority shareholder Maple Leaf Foods and others. — AGCanada.com Network

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Canada Bread said Monday the sliced bread and English muffins made at its Halifax plant “can be produced at other bakeries in Atlantic Canada where there is available capacity with improved speed and efficiency.”

“Our industry is under mounting competitive pressure to become more efficient and this means we have to make very difficult decisions,” Canada Bread president Barry McLean said in a release.

The 50,000-square-foot plant at Halifax employs about 105 people making bread and muffins for sale under the Ben’s, Dempster’s and Villaggio brands and for retailers’ private-label use.

Operations are to be wound down starting as early as June, the company said, with the “majority” of the output consolidated at Canada Bread’s New Brunswick bakeries in Moncton and Woodstock.

Ben’s Bakery was set up in Nova Scotia in 1907 by Ben Moir and was later 60 per cent owned by Quebec bakery firm Multi-Marques, which merged into Canada Bread in 2001. Canada Bread bought the remaining 40 per cent of Ben’s Ltd. in 2002.

Canada Bread said Monday it “will continue to produce products under the Ben’s brand and deliver the same high-quality products in Atlantic Canada that our customers and consumers have come to expect.”

Affected staff will get severance packages “that go beyond provincial labour requirements,” the company said, and will also be “encouraged” to seek work at Canada Bread’s 16 other facilities across the country.

Bimbo has owned Etobicoke, Ont.-based Canada Bread since last May, when it bought full control from majority shareholder Maple Leaf Foods and others for about $1.8 billion. — AGCanada.com Network

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Montreal-based Saputo’s baked goods business is billed as Canada’s top producer of snack cakes, sold mainly in the Canadian retail market and “on a small scale” in the U.S.

The company’s cakes are sold under the Vachon, hop + go, Hostess and Rondeau umbrella brands, whose brand names include Vachon, Jos Louis, Ah Caramel, Passion Flakie, Granny’s, Big Daddy and May West. The deal also includes one manufacturing plant in Quebec, now employing about 640 people.

“This operation will position Canada Bread for further growth in the country, complementing its current product portfolio and its distribution and manufacturing footprint,” Canada Bread said in a release.

Etoicoke, Ont.-based Canada Bread has been owned since May by Mexican bakery giant Grupo Bimbo, which paid $1.8 billion for the former Maple Leaf Foods subsidiary.

The deal for the Saputo bakery business is expected to close in February, pending approval from the federal Competition Bureau.

Canada Bread said Thursday it expects the Saputo business to generate annual sales of over $130 million. Saputo said its bakery division produced about $139 million in revenues, less than two per cent of Saputo’s consolidated revenues, in fiscal 2014.

Saputo diversified into the baked goods business in 1999, when it bought the assets of Quebec’s Culinar, including its storied Vachon product lines. In business since 1923, Vachon renamed itself Culinar in 1977.

The bakery division expanded in 2006, when Saputo bought control of Quebec bakery firms Boulangerie Rondeau and Biscuits Rondeau. — AGCanada.com Network

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