HyLife of La Broquerie held a grand opening Tuesday for its expanded and upgraded hog processing plant at Neepawa. Company President Claude Vielfaure says this will enable them to ramp up production, noting they now have 1,250 employees at the Neepawa facility.

"We'll be able to have a full double shift now so we are going to increase our capacity by about 15 per cent and it is going to help us supply even more pork to our customers that are asking for it. We've been sold out in certain areas so this will give us access to more pork. We'll be able to process just under two million hogs a year at the plant."

Vielfaure adds they've also improved the equipment in the plant so they can deliver an even better product.

"We have a lot of innovative and new equipment that we're putting in that's going to help us increase our shelf life. We have water jet cutting of meat and also a DeBoFlex line which is going to reduce the amount of touching of the meat which will increase the shelf life and the quality of our product."

The plant improvements are part of a $176 million investment by the company over the past couple of years. Vielfaure says a new feed mill in Killarney will go into service this summer. He adds HyLife is also in the process of building a number of new barns in western Manitoba.

The company now has a total Canadian workforce of about 2,000 people, most of them in Manitoba.

It says thanks to trade agreements, market access by the Government of Canada and strategic partnerships, HyLife is growing in Japan, China, Mexico and South Korea where export opportunities are focused on fresh chilled pork.

 

Official ribbon cutting at the new cut floor at the HyLife Foods plant in Neepawa Pictured here (L-R) – Guy Baudry - COO Foods, Denis Vielfaure – Executive Chief Operating Officer, Minister Robert Sopuck – MP for Dauphin/Swan River/Neepawa, Minister Eichler – Provincial Minister of Agriculture, Claude Vielfaure – President, Mayor Adrian deGroot – Mayor of Neepawa, Don Janzen – Chairman of the Board, Grant Lazaruk – Chief Executive Officer