Canada’s second largest grain handler plans to spend $15 million this year boosting capacity in Saskatchewan and building two new fertilizer facilities in Alberta.
Richardson International on Monday laid out its plans for capital investments at five sites between now and January 2011, part of its previously announced “multi-year strategic plan to expand and advance our network of grain-handling and crop input facilities,” according to Darwin Sobkow, the company’s vice-president of agribusiness operations.
Those expansions include increased grain storage capacity of 14,000 tonnes each at three of its Richardson Pioneer high-throughput elevators in Saskatchewan: Melfort, in the province’s northeast; Whitewood, about 110 km south of Yorkton in the province’s southeast; and Marshall, about 20 km southeast of Lloydminster.
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Also, two other Richardson Pioneer Ag Business Centres in Alberta will each get a new 6,000-tonne capacity fertilizer storage facility with a high-speed blender able to process 250 tonnes per hour. One will be at Stirling, about 30 km southeast of Lethbridge; the other at Dunmore, just southeast of Medicine Hat.
The privately-held Winnipeg firm described its plans in a release Monday as “the latest in a series of significant investments Richardson has made to build the most efficient agribusiness pipeline in Western Canada (and) part of a company-wide philosophy to invest locally and grow globally.”
“These improvements ensure that we will continue to provide our customers with greater capacity and dependable efficiency which, in turn, contributes positively to their farming operations,” Sobkow said.
Richardson has put up about $70 million since 2008 for such work at its elevators and ag business centres across the Prairies.
The company became the country’s second largest grain handler in 2007 after reaching a $315 million deal to buy a number of former Agricore United elevators, clearing the way for AU’s merger into Saskatchewan Wheat Pool under the name Viterra.
