Right in the centre - Sustainable growth
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- Published on Thursday, October 20, 2016
By Ken Waddell
Neepawa Banner/Neepawa Press
The recent announcement by Hylife Foods of Neepawa and La Broquerie is slowly sinking in. $125 million is a lot of money. It’s even more money when one considers some of the previous figures tossed around over the years. Few really know, and I am not one of the few, what Hylife paid for the Springhill Farms hog plant. The figure of $69 million was touted as being what was invested in the plant to buy it and improve it. Could be. We do know that the waste water treatment plant, E3, cost about $20 million. We do know that Itochu of Japan paid about $60 million for a one third interest a few years back. But $125 million, that tops them all.
HyLife is an interesting company. It has maintained growth but it was born out of adversity and necessity. The Vielfaure and Janzen families were set back hard by the 1980s recession and high interest rates. I know the feeling. I and many others of my generation, suffered through 23 per cent interest rates and are not farming today, partly because of those very hard times.
These two families were in the hog business, like many hundreds of other farmers. They bred and raised pigs, sold them on the open market and after a number of years, they realized that the profit potential was very slim when it existed at all. They decided to amalgamate, integrate and expand. They added their own genetics, a feed mill and worked on marketing. When they decided to build a plant in Winnipeg, the ill-fated Olywest project, they fell short on the approval process. A combination of short-sighted politicians, poor optics and an intense desire by certain Winnipeggers to avoid any possibility of more odours in Winnipeg, forced the consortium to step back and re-evaluate. Two of the Olywest partners, Olymel of Quebec and Big Sky Pork of Saskatchewan stepped aside leaving Hytek (now Hylife) to stand alone.
As the Olywest proposal was sagging into oblivion, I talked to Guy Baudry (now Hylife CEO) on the phone. I was living in Winnipeg trying to be a PC politician. In the midst of the run-up to the 2007 Manitoba election, there were forces at play in the City of Winnipeg council, the NDP Party of Manitoba and even the Progressive Conservative Party of Manitoba to thwart Olywest. I told Baudry that there was a problem, that people didn’t like the idea of a plant in Winnipeg and it would be a tough sell. Baudry insisted that the plan was a good one and he was absolutely correct. Time has proven that point. However, I clearly remember saying to Baudry about peoples’ concerns on water quality, “Guy, you cannot take clean water, mix in some piggy shit and then take the piggy shit out and convince city people that the water is clean. You can hardly convince rural people of that any longer.” To that I added that Hytek needed to get out into the country among more appreciative folks than they were finding in the City of Winnipeg. Little did I know that only a few months later, talks would be underway to buy the Springhill Farms plant at Neepawa.
One of the main opponents of the Olywest plant was Winnipeg Councillor Russ Wyatt. Wyatt is still outspoken and still on council. The Neepawa area should send Wyatt a Christmas card every year to thank him for chasing Hytekout of Winnipeg.
So today, the Neepawa area and all of Manitoba are reaping the benefits of the determination of Vielfaures, Janzens, Hytek, Hylife and Itochu to utilize the resources that we have here in this part of the world. We have land, grain, hogs, water and willpower to produce food for a hungry world, Hylife has seen that vision and acted on it. The population of Neepawa has grown by 25 per cent or so. The plant will employ 1,200 or more people with several hundred more around the province. Neepawa has always been a service centre and the spouses of Hylife workers and workers who have left Hylife form a huge part of our work force. In the bluntest of terms, without our new Canadians in the local work force it would be very difficult to keep some of our stores, restaurants, the care home, the hospital or Touchwood open. It’s a fact and we can be thankful for the determined vision of two farm families who have triggered all this development. Criticism may come and so be it, but the long term benefits have been achieved and with cooperation, more can yet be achieved. Sustainable growth is only a matter of attitude and time.
