The Rural Voice, 2004-09, Page 30Martin Dickinson brought plenty of examples of products created by Premier
Foods from Ontario white beans for British consumers.
A direct approach
Hensall District Co-op and Premier Foods want to
link directly with white bean producers for quality
control and stable pricing. Can contracts save
white bean production?
Story and photos by Keith Roulston
The humble white bean, once a
crop that built an industry in
southern Huron and Perth
counties, that turned Hensall into one
of the largest inland terminals and
was celebrated in the Zurich Bean
Festival, has fallen on hard times in
the past decade.
Back in 1990, there were 160,000
acres of white beans in Ontario. By
this year acreage has been estimated
at only 45,000 acres as prices for
soybeans and corn made the weather-
related risks of white bean production
unattractive to Ontario farmers. The
industry shifted from Ontario and
Michigan to Manitoba, Minnesota
and Dakota.
But if the world of bean
production in North America has
changed, so too has the situation in
the major market for white beans:
Great Britain. In the past 12 years the
number of companies canning white
beans has dropped from 10 to two.
The processing shakedown has
been the result of a changing
26 THE RURAL VOICE
supermarket situation in Great
Britain which will change still further
through the purchase of Asda, one of
the top three supermarket chains by
Wal-Mart with its philosophy of
"every day low prices".
Now Premier Foods, the largest
processor of beans in Britain has
teamed up with Hensall District Co-
op to change the way beans are
marketed in Ontario in the hope both
Ontario growers and the British food
giant can benefit.
Speaking at a late -July meeting of
growers organized by the co-op,
Martin Dickinson, senior buyer for
Premier Foods and Gord Pryde,
Marketing manager for Hensall
District Co-op outlined plans for a
new partnership between the
companies and bean producers in
Ontario and Manitoba. Pryde hopes
contracts will help Ontario
production rebound to 75,000 to
80,000 acres.
Pryde said he had been working
with Dickinson for the better part of
three and a half years on the
program. Over the first year or year
and a half they often talked about
where the industry was going, he
said. "We both had a concern about
long-term supply."
"One of the pillars of our long-
term plan is to work closely with the
manufacturers in the U.K. and
Hensall Global Logistics (an HDC
company) to make sure that every
container the leaves Hensall is
acceptable at the factory."
There has been an l8 -year
association between Premier and its
antecedent companies and HDC.
That long relationship has been based
on trust, sincerity and openness,
Dickinson said.
Dickinson not only buys £50
million worth of dry pulses but also
tomatoes and vegetables.
Today's Premier Foods is the
result of the consolidation of canning
companies in England. It's the
descendent of one company that that
dates back to the Napoleonic War but
real growth began early in the 20th
century between 1900 and the 1930s.
The canning industry flourished in
the 1960s and 1970s but by the end
of the 1980s consolidation began.
The industry has gone from being
heavily labour intensive in the 1930s
to being mostly run with robotics
today. Premier invested £3.4 million
in new machinery in one factory
alone in the first half of 2004.
Traditionally the canning industry
has been based on the eastern coast
of England. For years canning
companies processed as much food
as they could while fruits and
vegetables were in season, then tried
to sell it when the warehouse was
full. This created large surpluses of
product.
Coinciding with a consolidation in
the retail industry, it left all
bargaining power in the hands of
retail chains and the resulting
depressed prices drove many canning
companies to the wall, Dickinson
says. Premier is the result of this
consolidation, with factories bought
up for as little as £1. The company
now has annual revenues of £850
million and just went public.
The purchase of various
companies has given Premier access
to a number of brand names in well-
known England. "You can't make a