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By Alice McFarlane

Olymel Pork Processing Plant

Saskatchewan producers anxious for Olymel plant to reopen

Mar 3, 2021 | 4:24 PM

MELFORT, Sask. — Employees at the Olymel pork processing plant at Red Deer, Alta. could return to work soon.

The plant had been closed for more than two weeks as it deals with a COVID-19 outbreak among its employees.

Alberta Health and Occupational Health and Safety conducted an inspection of the plant on Monday. There are now indications the plant could fully reopen as early as tomorrow.

Sask Pork general manager Mark Ferguson said he can confirm hog processing will begin soon.

“Obviously, it’s going to be a scaled-up reopening,’ Ferguson said. “It’s not going to be full processing on the first day. That’s what we’re hearing.”

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Ferguson said its important to hog producers that the resumption goes ahead soon.

“The facility at Red Deer has been closed for about two and a half weeks now. That’s two and a half weeks worth of production that has been stranded at farms and producers have been feeding those hogs and they’ve been growing,” he said.

The challenge is producers run out of room in their barns. Ferguson said the sooner those animals are moving to processing plants the better off farmers will be.

“We’re hoping that this reopening goes smoothly and does happen at the tail end of this week” he said.

Ferguson said he believes producers have been coping as well as they can. They have been able to ship a few loads out to some of the other processors. There have also been some feeder pigs exported to the United States to make some extra room.

“I think they’re coping just about as well as they can,” Ferguson said.

Two weeks is about the longest producers can make room in their barns. Ferguson said the situation will become more serious if the plant does not reopen soon. Shipping pigs to the U.S. is not the best financial option as freight costs are much higher. There are opportunities to move hogs into the U.S., but it is not ideal.

“That’s really great news that there is capacity there but there are no plants anywhere close to the Canada-U.S. border, so farmers end up moving them into southern Minnesota and Iowa and the freight to do that is significant,” he said “Producers, if they take that step, it’s at a large financial loss so most are hoping to not have to do that.”

The union representing workers at the plant, UFCW Local 401, say a fourth person has died because of the COVID-19 outbreak at the facility.

Alberta Health has yet to confirm the fatality. There were 511 cases linked to the Olymel outbreak, with 91 active, down from last month’s peak of 212, and 418 recovered.

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alice.mcfarlane@jpbg.ca

On Twitter: @farmnewsNOW