Manitoba hog production company Hytek Ltd. has finalized its deal to buy the Springhill Farms pork packing plant near Neepawa, Man.
Hytek, based at La Broquerie, east of Steinbach, first announced the deal in October to buy the facility, about 75 km northeast of Brandon, for an undisclosed sum.
Hytek representatives told reporters in October that the company plans to spend $35 million to step up the plant’s kill rate to its rated capacity of 4,000 hogs per day, as well as the plant’s capacity to add value by producing new specialized cuts. That “modernizing” work will take place over the next two years, Hytek said Monday in a news release.
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Springhill was founded in 1986 by the Hutterite Brethren. The plant shut down indefinitely in 2003, citing hard times in the pork industry, but re-opened later that year following a $3 million provincial loan.
The Springhill Farms deal, when first announced, spelled the end of Hytek’s ambitious plan for a $200 million kill-and-cut hog plant in the industrial end of the St. Boniface district of Winnipeg.
City hall and the provincial government both supported the St. Boniface plan when it was announced in 2005, but the proposal ran afoul of residents and area businesses. The partners in the proposed OlyWest plant, Quebec packer Olymel and Saskatchewan hog producer Big Sky Farms, later backed out, leaving Hytek pledging to find other investors.
Hytek bills itself as the largest privately owned pork producer in Canada and 11th-largest in North America, with production and marketing operations across Canada and the U.S., plus production and processing investments in China.
