The owners of Thunder Creek Pork report renovations to the Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan based pork processing plant remain on track for a late December 2010 opening.
In May Langley, B.C. based Donald’s Fine Foods completed the purchase of the former Moose Jaw Packers pork processing plant and is now in the process of completing the renovations necessary to secure Canadian Food Inspection Agency certification.
Senior vice-president Tony Martinez says the renovations remain on track for completion in early December which would allow the first hogs to be slaughtered in late-December and the company is now in the process of hiring staff.
Right now we’ve just started from the top.
We’re currently searching for a plant general manager.
We do have a few candidates that we’ve short listed and we should be able to make a decision on that by the end of this week or early next week.
Then we’ve got a few maintenance individuals in there, some tradesmen that are obviously helping us with the renos.
Then we’ll proceed down the line and hire some of the administration staff obviously that’ll run the facility along with the general manager and then beyond that we’ll start to go into the hiring of the hourly folks which is everything from working on the slaughter floor to the fabrication floor to shipping and everywhere in between.
The overall number should be around anywhere between 160 and 200 people when we’re all said and done.
It really depends on the level of detail in our fabrication but we’re anticipating between 160 to 200 folks that we’re going to hire.
Martinez says, once processing begins, it will take about six months to ramp up to full production at which point he expects the facility to handle between one thousand and 12 hundred head per day.
He anticipates just over half of the pork produced at the facility to be exported and just under half to be marketed domestically.
Source: Farmscape.Ca
