The new Quebec owners of the province’s major lamb processing plant are vowing to revitalize the sheep sector in Alberta.
“The pie is going to get bigger — and we want everyone to benefit from it,” said Stéphane Beausoleil, an executive of Préval Ag who is now running the former SunGold lamb processing plant in Innisfail. “We’re very excited to be here.”
Although little known in the West, Préval Ag is an emerging powerhouse in the meat sector, with 42 divisions (mostly in eastern Canada and the U.S.) that employ 1,600 people and generate $750 million in annual sales.
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Beausoleil said the company has big plans for both the Innisfail plant and a large lamb feedlot at Iron Springs, which it purchased last month after the former owner went into creditor protection.
That includes refurbishing the Innisfail plant (formerly called SunGold and rechristened Westfine Meats) that currently processes 80,000 to 85,000 lambs a year, said Beausoleil.
“It was kind of let go over the last couple of years,” he said. “We will be investing in the next couple of months and for the long term, too.”
The company wants to increase production by sourcing more lambs from both Alberta and Saskatchewan.
“At the end of the day, there were a lot of lambs going to Ontario,” said Beausoleil. “We want to stop that. Our goal in year one is to stop 50 per cent of that. If we achieve that at the end, that will be a pretty good number for us and we’ll be pretty happy with this.”
Company officials began meeting with producers even before formally taking over the plant near the end of last month.
“We already had a meeting in early January with Alberta producers, and Saskatchewan producers as well,” said Beausoleil, adding the meetings were very positive.
Alberta Lamb Producers declined a request for comment but a large sheep producer from Saskatchewan welcomed the arrival of Préval Ag, which bills itself as the largest integrated lamb and veal company in North America.
“I’m excited and I think it’s great,” he said. “They’re wanting to work with producers. The producers who have been working with them, they’re wanting to keep them going. They want to get more people and work with them.”
But the lamb sector in both Alberta and Saskatchewan is fractured, said the producer, who requested anonymity in order to speak candidly.
Many producers operate on a small scale and won’t share Préval Ag’s ambition to grow the sector by producing high-quality animals year-round, he said.
“Barely anyone wants to work with this,” said the producer, adding many are happy with the status quo. “You raise your lamb, get it picked up on this day, they’re gone and then you get your cheque.”
Ontario is the biggest producer of lambs in the country, with a roughly 30 per cent share, with Alberta in second spot (24 per cent) and Quebec close behind (20 per cent).
But StatCan’s twice-yearly survey data also shows the seasonal nature of the business. While the number of sheep over the age of one year stays steady all year long, the number of lambs fluctuates dramatically.
StatCan says there were 520,000 lambs on Canadian farms on July 1 of last year, but only 300,000 at the start of the year. It’s a story repeated annually in every province — in Alberta last year, there were 124,000 lambs on July 1 but just 55,000 on Jan. 1.
Quest for steady supply
Producing slaughter-ready lambs year-round was the main objective of the former owner of the Innisfail processing plant.
The North American Lamb Company (a joint venture between a New Zealand company and Alberta investors) said its business model would accomplish that — and that was going to revolutionize the lamb sector in Western Canada.
The company had breeding and lambing operations at four locations in Manitoba and the business plan was centred on shipping feeder lambs to its feedlot at Iron Springs for finishing.
However, the enterprise was a serial money loser and last summer went into creditor protection owing more than $50 million.
While Préval Ag bought the feedlot (via a separate division, West Excelamb), it didn’t buy the Manitoba lambing barns. But the company will be encouraging producers to lamb throughout the year, said Beausoleil.
“We put a lot of work and focus on planning and making sure we have year-round supply,” he said. “The message that we sent to these people is that we want to grow with them. It’s important that we have a strong producer base that can survive all year long. We want to provide lamb all year.”
Quality could also be an issue. When the North American Lamb Company launched in 2018, its then president criticized the quality and consistency of lamb carcasses. But improving quality takes an investment in genetics and production methods, said the Saskatchewan producer.
“I put a lot of money and resources, and my breed is based off making a good carcass,” he said, questioning how many other producers would be willing to do the same.
But Préval Ag, which started as veal operation (and is still run by brothers Fabien, Donald and Alexandre Fontaine), has a long history of working with livestock farmers, said Beausoleil.
“We’re producers so we understand their challenges and their needs,” he said. “At the same time, we’re processors. There’s no magic recipe. You have to work together in collaboration.
“Producers have to make adjustments on their side to work with us. So far, the response has been very good.
“They’ve been very open and happy about us taking over.”
Westfine Meats has established its grading and pricing index for the year, he added. All of the existing employees have been offered jobs and the company will be keeping the SunGold and Lamb Tonight brands.
“The brand is recognized, and we don’t want to change that,” said Beausoleil. “This is our first operation in Western Canada. We have other operations in the U.S., we are quite familiar with other markets. We already service some customers out here from our Montreal operations.”
Préval Ag has a host of divisions, some it started and others purchased, and sells a range of products, including veal, beef, lamb, and vegetables. Its brands include Famille Fontaine (ready-to-eat veal products), Catelli Brothers (an American meat company selling to both food service companies and retailers), and Ontario’s Cohn Farms, a produce distributor.
Having a company with that sort of business experience and financial wherewithal is good news for the lamb sector, said the Saskatchewan producer.
“I think this is the best chance we have had to make money in the last how many years,” he said.
