To supply an increasing demand for its product and improve its competitive position, HyLife has announced plans to invest approximately 125 million dollars to modernize and expand its Integrated Pork Production and Processing System.
HyLife envisions expanding its Neepawa pork processing plant, moving to a full double shift and adding production infrastructure to allow pigs currently sold to the U.S. to be finished and processed in Manitoba.
HyLife President Claude Vielfaure says the time has come to reinvest back into Hylife’s integrated system.
Our company has grown significantly over the last few years and we purchased the Neepawa processing plant in 2008 and had 300 employees, invested heavily over the years and now we are 12 hundred employees. We’ve grown our markets all over the world, specifically in Japan and China and the demand for our product has outgrown our supplies.
We’re looking to expand our plant by 130,000 square feet which will include a much bigger cut floor than we have today, packaging, shipping. We’re going to put a lot of innovation in the plant and improve our processes so it should become a very world class plant after we’re done. Part of the project is we’re gong t have to add some infrastructure, like a feed mill and some finishing barns.
We have the pigs today that are being sold to the U.S. as weaner-feeder pigs so we are gong to bring them back, try to finish them in the finishing barns that we will build, likely in western Manitoba and then those pigs are going to go to our plant.
~ Claude Vielfaure, HyLife
Vielfaure says the project will bring up to 165 new jobs to the communities in which HyLife operates and will increase its total employee base to approximately 2,000.
