Jeff Traeger, President and Chief Executive Officer with UFCW Local 832, said the strike vote was a first for the plant and was taken in response to Maple Leaf’s refusal to take the bargaining process seriously so far.

Maple Leaf has been pushing major concessions at the table, and the union members have shown they are united and want a fair deal, he said.

The union and Maple Leaf were back at the bargaining table Monday, Nov. 17. Negotiations are expected to continue right up to the current contract’s expiry on Dec. 31.

UFCW 832’s bargaining committee is made up of seven members from various departments at the plant, and three staff members from the union. The committee first started to collect proposals from the membership in February and brought these proposals to the bargaining table in May.

The Lagomidiere plant in Winnipeg produces and packages pork products, including bacon.

The post Workers at Maple Leaf’s Lagimodiere plant in Winnipeg give overwhelming strike mandate appeared first on Farmtario.

“This choice reflects our deep respect for the history and legacy of this iconic brand, while affording us the opportunity to bring it forward and blend it with our ambitious vision for the future as a world-leading pork producer,” said pork division president Dennis Organ in a news release.

Organ is set to be CEO of Canada Packers.

Maple Leaf announced in July it would split off its pork division into an independent entity. It will retain a 19.9 per cent ownership of the pork business.

The two companies will form an “evergreen” pork supply agreement to provide Maple Leaf with pork, and Canada Packers with a secure “anchor customer,” the news release said.

The separation is set for some time next year.

Maple Leaf will continue to produce consumer packaged goods, the news release said.

Maple Leaf Foods Inc was formed in 1991 when Canada Packers merged with Maple Leaf Mills Ltd, according to Maple Leaf’s website.

Canada Packers formed in 1927 when the Harris Abbatoir Company and the William Davies Company Ltd merged, the Manitoba Historical Society’s website says.

The post Canada Packers name reemerges as Maple Leaf spins off pork division appeared first on Farmtario.

“Maple Leaf Foods has done nothing wrong here,” the company said in a Sept. 18 news release ahead of a scheduled Sept. 19 court hearing.

Earlier this month, Canada Bread alleged that Maple Leaf Foods personnel “directed and participated in certain anti-competitive conduct” that was investigated by Canada’s competition bureau and then “used Canada Bread as a shield” after Canada Bread was fined $50 million in 2023. Maple Leaf Foods was then majority owner of Canada Bread, which has been owned by Grupo Bimbo (Bimbo Canada) since 2014.

In 2023 Ontario’s Superior Court fined Canada Bread after the company pled guilty to four counts of fixing bread prices in 2007 and 2011. The allegations came to light in an industry-wide federal investigation launched in 2017 by the Competition Bureau.

Maple Leaf Foods said Canada Bread must want to embroil it into ongoing class action proceedings and added that the Ontario Superior Court rejected similar claims against Maple Leaf three years ago.

“Canada Bread is using this, and other false claims, in a transparent attempt to set itself up to try to recover damages from Maple Leaf Foods related to Canada Bread’s own decision to seek leniency from the Competition Bureau in 2017 for an alleged conspiracy that Maple Leaf Foods and others say never actually occurred,” the news release said.

“We will continue to vigorously defend ourselves against these (and other) unfounded claims,” it added.

Earlier this summer, grocery giant Loblaw (Loblaw Companies Limited) and parent company George Weston Limited announced that a $500 million settlement had been reached in a class action suit concerning their involvement in the bread price-fixing scandal. The parties named in the class action suite are Loblaw, George Weston, Canada Bread, Sobeys, Metro, Wal-Mart and Giant Tiger, according to class action firm LPC Advocats’ website.

The post Maple Leaf Foods defends against claims it used Canada Bread as a shield in price fixing investigation appeared first on Farmtario.

Maple Leaf Foods will retain a 19.9 per cent ownership position in the newly formed pork company, the name of which will be announced in the coming months, the company said.

Maple Leaf will join a host of companies that have demerged their businesses to streamline operations and realize more value.

Globally, several companies including most recently chemical maker DuPont have moved to break up their businesses in an attempt to increase profitability and revenue growth.

The spinoff company will enter into a pork supply agreement with Maple Leaf Foods and will continue to supply pork at market prices to meet the needs of the prepared foods business.

Maple Leaf Foods will in turn provide the new company with brokerage services in North America, as well as certain other services.

The owner of Schneiders, a premium meat products brand, said its separation plan has the support of McCain Capital and the McCain family, which has the largest and controlling stake in Maple Leaf Foods.

Maple Leaf Foods will continue to be led by CEO Curtis Frank, while Dennis Organ, who headed the pork business, will become the CEO of the new company.

The separation plan, which has been approved by the board of directors, is expected to be completed in 2025.

Upon completion of the separation, existing Maple Leaf Foods shareholders are expected to receive an equal part of shares in the new pork company.

—Reporting for Reuters by Anuja Bharat Mistry in Bengaluru

The post Maple Leaf Foods plans to split into two independent public companies appeared first on Farmtario.

Maple Leaf Foods on Thursday reported a net loss of $311.89 million on $4.739 billion in gross sales for its fiscal year ending Dec. 31, 2022, down from net earnings of $102.82 million on $4.521 billion in sales in 2021.

For its fourth quarter alone, the company booked a net loss of $41.49 million on $1.186 billion in sales, down from net earnings of $1.88 million on $1.12 billion in sales in the year-earlier period.

The past year “was clearly a year of unprecedented challenges for us on many fronts, including hyper-inflation, dislocation in the pork markets, supply chain dysfunction, job vacancies and a cyberattack,” CEO Michael McCain said in a release Thursday.

Despite all that, he said, “we have maintained a steady hand on executing our plans including aggressively building our sustainability platform, starting up over $1 billion of new assets and converting our plant-based business model to profitable growth.”

McCain said the company “continue(s) to see an inflection point in our business,” noting the ongoing startup of Maple Leaf’s new poultry processing plant at London, Ont.

The company also expects its nascent plant-based protein business is “on track to get to adjusted EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) neutral or better” in the back half of 2023, he said.

The London poultry plant, construction of which was first announced in 2018 for completion in 2021, was delayed into 2022, reportedly due to wet weather and the COVID-19 pandemic. First budgeted at $660 million, the total capital spend on the new plant was pegged in Thursday’s report at $772 million.

By the end of 2023, though, the new London site is expected to have consolidated the work of five of the company’s existing Ontario poultry processing plants, four of which have been slated to be closed.

McCain told analysts on a conference call Thursday that the new London plant is expected to add $100 million to the company’s EBITDA margin on an annualized basis by the end of this year, whether the market dynamic seen in 2022 improves or not.

Another $30 million will be added to that figure during the ramp-up of the company’s “bacon centre of excellence” at its Lagimodiere Boulevard prepared meats plant in Winnipeg, also independent of the market dynamic.

The Winnipeg plant has seen expansions and upgrades in recent years for both bacon and ham processing, as the company consolidated that business from other plants across the country.

Its most recent “bacon centre of excellence” expansions, which included an additional smokehouse, two new pre-cooked bacon production lines and a new line for bacon bits and chips, involved a capital spend of $182 million, the company said Thursday.

Furthermore, company officials said exports to China have now resumed from Maple Leaf’s main hog slaughter and fresh pork cutting plant at Brandon, Man., following their suspension in 2020. The resumption of exports from Brandon to China will be “accretive to our earnings” starting early in the second quarter of 2023, the company said.

Maple Leaf and other companies are expanding back into the Chinese market just as demand for pork there is increasing and the pork supply from European exporting nations is seen to be declining, officials said.

The company said its “inflection point” will see a shift away from “pandemic-induced supply chain instability,” product prices lagging behind the current rate of inflation and a “sustained period of investing over $1 billion in new assets.”

Instead, Maple Leaf said it expects to see a transition this year to “supply chain stability.” Product pricing “to mitigate inflation” will be fully in place, also by the end of the second quarter of this year.

The company is also expecting “normalized” global pork markets, for which it said the “green shoots” are now visible.

“These unprecedented markets will normalize; they always do,” McCain said in Thursday’s release.

Maple Leaf in its fourth quarter also incurred an estimated $23 million in one-time costs from a ransomware attack on its computer systems in November.

The release of Maple Leaf’s 2022 ledger follows a report of losses from another major Canadian pork and poultry packer.

Quebec-based Olymel, the meat packing arm of Sollio Co-operative Group, in February reported a $445.7 million loss on $4.6 billion in sales for its fiscal year ending last Oct. 29. — Glacier FarmMedia Network

The post Maple Leaf sees ‘inflection point’ beyond red ink of 2022 appeared first on Farmtario.

The company on Thursday released that estimate as part of its fourth-quarter financial report, in which it booked a Q4 net loss of $41.49 million on $1.186 billion in sales and a full-year net loss of $311.89 million on $4.739 billion in sales.

During its fourth quarter, on Nov. 6, 2022, Mississauga-based Maple Leaf confirmed it was hit with a “system outage stemming from a cybersecurity incident.”

In Thursday’s report, the company reiterated it “took immediate action and engaged cybersecurity and recovery experts” upon learning of the attack, and “executed its business continuity plans” as it restored affected systems.

Maple Leaf said it was able to maintain operations throughout the event and work with customers and suppliers to “minimize service disruptions,” but nevertheless, its “normal business activities were interrupted.”

With that came the expenses of “system restoration costs, lost sales, overtime, spoiled inventory” and professional fees paid to its experts, the company said.

The company on Thursday estimated fourth-quarter “direct and indirect economic impact” of “at least” $23 million relating to the incident.

Maple Leaf also said it expects to recover some of those costs through related insurance payouts later in 2023. CEO Michael McCain said those amounts can’t yet be booked into the company’s financial results but the company is “very confident” it will be able to recoup some of those costs.

Asked Thursday about the nature of the cybersecurity attack, a company spokesperson said via email the attackers in this case “did try to extort a ransom from us and we refused to pay.”

Maple Leaf in November reported “operational and service disruptions that vary by business unit, plant and site.”

The company’s operations in Canada include hog slaughter plants at Brandon, Man. and Lethbridge, Alta.; five fresh poultry plants in Ontario and one at Edmonton; hatcheries in Ontario and Alberta; five feed mills in Manitoba; and pork and poultry further-processing sites in five provinces. The company recently opened a major new poultry plant at London, Ont.

As for its livestock production, “our farms have adjusted their practices due to the system outage, and we feel confident in our ability to care for our animals and meet their needs,” Maple Leaf said at the time.

On a call with market analysts Thursday, McCain said the $23 million estimate reflects a combination of “incremental” costs incurred as a result of the company’s “entire team” shifting its focus to deal with the incident.

Within less than 48 hours of the attack being discovered, he said, staff were able to shift operations to “fully manual… essentially paper-and-pencil” while company information systems were cleaned and rebooted.

While the company didn’t use the word in its report, the nature of the attack points to ransomware — a form of malware that either encrypts a targeted computer system’s files, rendering them unusable, or removes a system’s sensitive data.

A ransom, usually payable in cryptocurrency, is then demanded of the system’s owner, in exchange for a decryption key or the missing data.

Maple Leaf’s outage isn’t the first ransomware attack in Canada’s meat packing sector. Canadian operations of Brazilian meat packer JBS briefly halted in the summer of 2021 when that company’s U.S. arm was hit by what was later confirmed to be a ransomware attack.

However, where Maple Leaf says it refused to pay, the CEO of JBS USA later confirmed the company did pay a cryptocurrency ransom equivalent to about US$11 million.

Andre Nogueira was quoted by Reuters at the time as saying “we felt this decision had to be made to prevent any potential risk for our customers.” — Glacier FarmMedia Network

The post Cyberattack a $23 million hit on Maple Leaf ledger appeared first on Farmtario.

The company said in a release Monday that it “took immediate action and engaged cybersecurity and recovery experts” when it learned of the problem, and its in-house and third-party experts are investigating.

A company representative said separately via email Monday that the incident has caused “operational and service disruptions that vary by business unit, plant and site” but didn’t specify which facilities were or are affected or how.

Mississauga-based Maple Leaf’s operations in Canada include hog slaughter plants at Brandon, Man. and Lethbridge, Alta.; five fresh poultry plants in Ontario and one at Edmonton; hatcheries in Ontario and Alberta; five feed mills in Manitoba; and pork and poultry further-processing sites in five provinces. The company in late September also announced it had completed construction work on a major new poultry plant at London, Ont.

“Our farms have adjusted their practices due to the system outage, and we feel confident in our ability to care for our animals and meet their needs,” Maple Leaf said via email.

Asked Monday about the nature of the incident — a ransomware attack or computer virus, for example — Maple Leaf wouldn’t specify, but said via email it’s “deploying our business continuity plan and implementing workarounds to mitigate the impact on our operations and business.”

Meanwhile, it said it “expect(s) some disruption in our operations and service levels” as it works on “restoring business continuity.”

In its release, it said it “will continue to work with all its customers and suppliers to minimize these disruptions.”

Maple Leaf’s systems outage isn’t the first cybersecurity breach to affect Canada’s meat packing sector. Canadian operations of Brazilian meat packer JBS briefly halted last summer when that company’s U.S. arm was hit by what was later confirmed to be a ransomware attack.

Elsewhere in Canada, major grocery firm Empire Co., whose retail chains include Sobeys, Safeway, IGA and FreshCo among others, also announced Monday its operations have been affected by an unspecified “IT systems issue.”

Empire said in a release its grocery stores remain open as usual and aren’t yet seeing “significant disruptions,” except that some in-store services are “functioning intermittently or with a delay” and some in-store pharmacies are “experiencing technical difficulties in fulfilling prescriptions.” — Glacier FarmMedia Network

The post Cybersecurity ‘incident’ hits Maple Leaf systems appeared first on Farmtario.

Cam Dahl, who was named GM of the provincial pork organization in February last year after previously working for Manitoba Beef Producers and Cereals Canada, cited two projects he considers to be a boon for Manitoba’s pork industry.

The first was the $182 million, 73,000-square foot expansion of the Maple Leaf Foods plant in Winnipeg. built for packaging pre-cooked bacon and completed last October.

“Those were 350 jobs we were exporting to the United States previously,” Dahl said.

Later this month, Dutch hog breeder Topigs Norsvin will officially open its new nucleus facility named Innova Canada in the Municipality of Westlake-Gladstone, at a site about 100 km northwest of Portage la Prairie. The company’s Canadian headquarters are in Oak Bluff, just outside Winnipeg.

“It’s a $35 million investment and it comes with 35 high-tech jobs,” Dahl added. “These are the kinds of investments that are happening because we have that critical mass of production here. The industry’s growing and maybe there are some bottlenecks that are holding that up, but… we see the demand for the product.”

Worldwide, there is plenty of uncertainty according to Dahl. African swine fever (ASF) continues to threaten pigs in countries including China, the Philippines and more recently in Germany.

“There’s close to $500,000 coming from producers that goes into research on things like protecting ourselves from ASF, working on production diseases like porcine epidemic diarrhea (PED),” he said. “What are the best practices to minimize some of those costs? Research plays a really large part and (we’re) making sure we’re prepared for those large shocks…We’ve come a long way on biosecurity over the last 20 to 25 years.”

Meanwhile, recent COVID-19 lockdowns in China could negatively impact the number of pig exports going to the country and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is threatening feed grain shipments.

On the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, the December lean hogs contract on Thursday touched 88.25 U.S. cents per pound, its highest price in a month. But while Dahl says prices are strong for Manitoba pork, costs are also high.

“The prices of wheat, corn and soymeal are not cheap,” he said. “We’re not in a drought in the Great Plains this year, but the last couple of years, the drought really did have a significant impact because of the prices people were seeing for feed.”

A porcine epidemic diarrhea (PED) outbreak first detected on Manitoba hog farms last year is slowing down, Dahl said, and he believes the pork industry will continue to grow in the coming months.

“Since 2017, we’ve seen about 40 barns built since (Manitoba’s moratorium on new hog barns) was lifted,” Dahl added. “But there’s that uncertainty and it’s something that comes with the industry and we’ll need to be prepared for that in case shocks do happen.”

— Adam Peleshaty reports for MarketsFarm from Stonewall, Man.

The post Manitoba pork industry grows despite ‘uncertainty’ appeared first on Farmtario.

Maple Leaf said Wednesday that in “pursuing further optimization opportunities,” it will shift poultry volumes now processed at Bradford and nearby Schomberg to the new London plant that’s now expected to be completed later this year.

For the next 18 months, work will continue as usual at Bradford and Schomberg, but volumes now handled at those two plants will be shifted to London by the end of 2023 as the new plant ramps up to full production, the company said.

Past that point, the Bradford plant “will continue to operate with a new focus on value-added opportunities,” Maple Leaf said. The plant at Schomberg, about 40 km north of Mississauga, will be shut down.

The company said it “expects to identify opportunities at other plants within the Maple Leaf network” for affected workers.

The Bradford and Schomberg plants came to Maple Leaf in 2018 and last summer, respectively.

Maple Leaf in 2018 bought the former Cericola Farms poultry plants at Bradford and at Drummondville, Que., along with a supply agreement for 100 per cent of the processed chicken volume from Cericola’s Sure Fresh plant at Schomberg. Maple Leaf then exercised an option to buy the Schomberg plant last June.

Maple Leaf during that time had already announced plans to consolidate its own poultry processing around the new London facility, by closing the former Schneiders plant at St. Marys, Ont., followed by its Toronto and Brampton poultry plants later this year.

The new London plant, a project also announced in 2018, was originally expected to be complete in 2021. However, a company representative told the London Free Press last fall that delays due to wet weather and COVID-19 have pushed that date to later in 2022.

Maple Leaf also sold off the former Cericola plant at Drummondville in 2020 to Quebec processor Volaille Giannone, which in turn closed it a few months later. — Glacier FarmMedia Network

The post Maple Leaf to further consolidate Ontario poultry packing appeared first on Farmtario.

Toronto-based Maple Leaf announced Wednesday it plans to buy the four barns from Polar Pork, a group of farms spearheaded by members of the Possberg family — well known as the founding family behind major Saskatchewan hog producer Big Sky Farms, which was sold to Olymel in 2013.

The exact terms of the deal and locations of the barns weren’t released, but Maple Leaf said it expects to invest up to $27 million in the barns over time.

That amount will include the acquisition costs as well as capital costs to “maximize capacity and add further animal care enrichments.”

Maple Leaf said its deal for the four barns, which it expects to close in June next year, will “enhance (its) overall pig supply and substantially increase its pig production capacity in the province.”

The deal, Maple Leaf said, has the potential to supply about 140,000 pigs to the company — a level it said is “directly” tied to plans to further boost production at its flagship pork slaughter and processing plant at Brandon, Man.

Michael Detlefsen, president of Maple Leaf Foods’ pork complex, said the acquisition “offers us ready access to some of the healthiest hogs in Saskatchewan that will allow us to enhance our deliveries of high-quality pork to customers in Canada and Asia.”

The company, Detlefsen added, is “very impressed with the skill the Possberg family and the team at Polar Pork have brought to the operation of these barns.” — Glacier FarmMedia Network

The post Maple Leaf to buy four Saskatchewan hog barns appeared first on Farmtario.