The Rural Voice, 2000-12, Page 24Acre -T, Norfolk packers combine
to build Listowel packing plant
Miriam
Terpstra
with Lar
and Glenn
Tulpin,
show plans
for hew
p
Ontario's newest, most modern
pork packing plant will be
built in the heart of pork
country at Listowel.
The plant is being built by Oxford
Packers, a new company that is a
50/50 partnership between Miriam
Terpstra of Acre -T Farms of
Brussels, and Larry and Glenn Tulpin
of Norfolk Packers in St. Williams. It
will be a federally -inspected kill and
chill plant capable of handling 150
hogs per hour.
It's expected ground will be
broken early in 200.1, pending
successful negotiations to purchase
the 50 -acre parcel of land from the
Town of North Perth. The site, west
of Hwy. 23 south of Listowel near
the town's sewage treatment plant,
will be developed as a food
processing industrial park with the
packing plant taking up 16 acres.
Gas, water and electricity will have
to be provided to the site and a
roadway through the parcel to serve
the various lots must be constructed.
It's very difficult to find a suitable
site for a packing plant, said Claude
Robin, the broker for Zahnd Real
Estate who put the land deal together.
Another parcel of land behind the
Campbell Soup Plant was available
but it is close to an expanding
residential area and the company
worried about future conflict with
neighbours. The chosen location is in
the middle of farmland, farm from
20 THE RURAL VOICE
urban areas, even though it is
serviced. Everything to the east of the
plant is industrial property. It also is
located so that trucks do not have to
go through an urban area to reach the
plant.
The partnership had grown after
both parties discovered, about a year
and a half ago, they were moving in
the same direction, said Terpstra.
Acre -T Farms was looking at
building its own packing plant.
Norfolk Packers, which was
provincially inspected, was looking
to build a new plant to meet tougher
federal standards, said Larry Tulpin.
Both sides bring strengths to the
partnership, said Dave Frank,
marketing manager for Acre -T Farms
who is acting as a marketing
consultant to Oxford Packers. The
Tulpins bring expertise in packing
while the Terpstras bring strength in
pork production and will provide a
steady supply of pork.
"When you're operating a plant
like this, volume is fairly critical,"
Frank said. Acre -T has contracted 50
per cent of the capacity of the plant
to provide that critical flow. Initially
about two-thirds of Acre -T's hogs
will go through the plant but
eventually it will handle 100 per cent
of the company's hogs, he said.
But, says Terpstra, the plant also
creates opportunities for other
farmers and small processors. It will
custom kill hogs on a per -hog fee.
This will allow some small
provincially -inspected plants to
contract out their killing operations
and concentrate on upgrading their
processing operations to meet federal
standards, a much more economical
proposition. It would allow these
plants to double their capacity and,
because further processing is more
labour intensive, would create more
jobs. It also creates export
opportunities since the plant is
federally inspected.
Frank said other ,spin-off
industries may develop from the
plant to further process the meat
products.
The 30,000 square foot, $6.5
million plant is expected to open in
the fall of 2001 and will operate at
about half capacity for the early
months as staff becomes trained.
Initially, 50 people will be employed,
.with a capacity to handle 5,000 hogs
a week. Plans are to move within 15
months to two shifts, handling
10,000 hogs a week with a workforce
of 100, then to 200 employees within
five years.
Some of the initial skilled staff
will be brought into the area, said
Terpstra but they will train more
local staff as the plant expands.
Though unemployment in the
Listowel area is already low, she
expects to have little trouble getting
workers. Listowel is close enough to
Kitchener -Waterloo and Guelph for
people to commute and there were
experienced processing workers Laid
off when the Canada Packers poultry
plant closed in Walkerton.
Average wage in the plant will be
about $12 an hour plus benefits, said
Frank. "The wages are good enough
to draw people."
Additional capacity for hog
slaughtering is needed in
Ontario, said Jim Vidoczy,
director of consumer marketing for
Ontario Pork. Currently Ontario is
shipping up to 20,000 hogs a week to
packers out of the province, he said.
While Ontario is exporting live
hogs, it is also importing pork, said
Frank. Though he wouldn't reveal
Acre -T's plans for marketing its
pork, he did say that Ontario is
basically self-sufficient but buyers
are having to go outside the province
to fill the consumer demand. By
keeping Ontario -raised hogs in