Hylife expanding and becoming more efficient
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- Published on Friday, December 18, 2015
By Ken Waddell
Neepawa Banner/Neepawa Press
Hylife Foods of Neepawa is on a steady expansion path. Guy Baudry, Sr. VP & GM at Hylife, said in an interview with The Neepawa Banner, “It’s all about addressing congestion.” The processing lines at Hylife are quite crowded. “We are faced with a continually expanding demand for our products and so we need to expand distribution, chill cooler and cut floor space.”
Baudry indicated that Hylife has enough hogs coming out of its company and contracted barns, which is in contrast to some other companies in the hog business.
Hylife is looking at adding more value on an ongoing basis to their product line and have established a joint venture to process hams at a plant in Mexico.
Before the trade sanctions between Russia and Canada came into effect, Hylife sent a lot of product to Russia. “When Russia left us, we looked for other markets,”said Baudry. Turning fresh pork primals into hams is one way of increasing value. Baudry is going to Mexico in the middle of December to check out the ramp up of the plant. One of Hylife’s major markets is Japan and Hylife is partially owned by Japanese food processing giant, Itochu.
As for the local expansion, Baudry added, “Our team is working on the details, we hope to get our plans approved by February and begin the construction required at Neepawa by the fall of 2016. Modernization and automation to bring in even more efficiency is the goal.” To achieve that goal Baudry said, “We have lots of new young people in our leadership team and we are holding leadership and change management workshops to provide our team the necessary skills to manage their day to day responsibilities at the plant. We are also focusing on Operational & Lean Manufacturing training which teaches our team how to drive continuous improvements in their day to day activities. Hylife has their head office in La Broquerie, Manitoba with barns, farms and feed processing facilities across the southern prairies. The company also has barns and a processing plant in China.
