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By Becky Zimmer

Canola Crush

Canola growth in Saskatchewan predicted to match crushing facility development

Jun 21, 2022 | 6:06 AM

New Saskatchewan-based canola crushing facilities are creating more of a market for prairie canola growers.

Dale Leftwich, policy manager with SaskCanola, noted multiple new facilities that have been announced in the last two years which will create another 150 per cent of carrying capacity for the canola market.

“Currently, the crush capacity in Saskatchewan is about 4.3 million tons and the actual increases that are gonna go on with the Cargill facility and the Richardson facility, and the FCL facility and the Ceres facility to name a few…will add an additional 6.8 million metric tonnes of canola across capacity of the province.” Leftwich told farmnewsNOW.

The spring of 2021 was the year of canola crush facility announcements as one company after another announced new and expanding facilities with state-of-the-art transportation and efficient processing systems.

Cargill will be developing a $350-million project in Regina, Sask.

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Announced in April 2021, Cargill reported in a press release that they plan for the facility to be operational by 2024, with plans to also expand production at plants in Camrose, Alta. and Clavet, Sask.

Annual production capacity will reach 1 million metric tonnes with 1 million hours of employment throughout the construction phase with 50 full-time positions available once the plant is operational.

Federated Co-operative Limited (FCL) with their joint venture partnership with AGT Food and Ingredients Inc. will be developing their new facility in the Regina area.

Their canola crush plant will be part of a $2 billion investment FCL is making to construct an Integrated Agriculture Complex which will also include the recently announced renewable diesel plant.

The Ceres Global Ag Corp. announced in May their intention to build a state-of-the-art facility in Northgate, Sask., close to the United States border.

Annual capacity will be 1.1 million metric tons of canola and the ability to refine 500,000 metric tons of canola oil for both food and fuel, reported Ceres in a press release.

Viterra has also announced their intent to build a Regina-based facility and “feasibility stage to finalize the plant’s capabilities and design” in April 2021.

According to a press release at that time, their goal is to have an annual crush capacity of 2.5 million metric tonnes.

Richardson Pioneer also announced the expansion of their Yorkton facility during that time.

According to a press release at that time, a significant investment is being made to modernize that facility which will double processing capacity to 2.2 million metric tonnes.

With all the growth in the canola industry, what does that mean for the canola industry on the prairies?

Canola crush facilities processes canola oil, both cooking and biodiesel, and canola meal.
With a worldwide shortage of cooking oil and Saskatchewan seeding and producing the largest portion of Canadian canola, there is room to grow within the current canola market, said Leftwich.

Canola production and crush as recorded and predicted by the Canola Council of Canada. (Canola Council of Canada/www.canolacouncil.org/about-canola/processing-industry/)

The push for renewable diesel from the United States and other parts of the world is there, he said and it only takes a few extra steps to process biodiesel.

“After they build the facilities, I guess they probably have some idea that some of the oil at least will be going into biodiesel as well as the food industry.”

With many plants being built in the eastern part of the province, Leftwich said that is because more farmers in those areas are adding canola into their rotation that weren’t before.

Southern plants in the province also give Saskatchewan canola an advantage since much of the transportation is done into the United States.

“Alberta has freight advantages to the west coast for export and Saskatchewan has kind of freight advantages going south. So these areas are all kind of along the rail transport corridor.”

While the number of acres going into canola are limited, either by rotational safety or the amount of acres available per operation, Leftwich said research is going into effectively increasing the amount of bushels a producer can get per acre, which currently sits at 42 bushels an acre on average.

“If we add an additional 10 bushels to the acre in Saskatchewan, which is the goal and can be achieved with, you know, agronomic changes. And what you’re looking at is that there’s another 5 million tonnes of canola available more or less.”

Chris Vervaet, executive director at Canadian oilseed Processors Association and the Canola Council of Canada told farmnewsNOW they will be relying on those productivity increases, which historically, has been the trend in crop production on the prairies.

“The previous decades of crop production in Canada have shown again, over that time period, that there’s an ability to continue to produce more product on the same amount of land, and we don’t see that changing in the coming five or 10 years.”

As the demand for canola continues to grow, Vervaet said these crushing facilities filling that demand means more support for higher canola prices.

“That’s probably the biggest benefit to the farm community is the prospect for higher prices because of higher demand.”

Oilseed processing has become the leader of value add processing in the country, he said, and crush capacity has grown over the last 10 to 15 years.

“It’s encouraging to see that continue, and perhaps continue in a way that we’ve never seen it before, because it is growing at an unprecedented rate at the moment, again, if all that crushed capacity comes online.”

With many of the facilities predicted to open in 2024, this will create job growth within the construction industry before jobs are added in the facilities themselves, said Vervaet.

As for how the opening of these facilities will impact canola production, he said we will have to wait and see, however historically processing and product will grow together.

“That will be an interesting dynamic to follow in the coming years because that could shift things a little bit. But we also have to keep in the back of our minds, as we see crushed expanding in the coming years, we fully anticipate for our canola supplies to also increase in lockstep.”

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becky.zimmer@pattisonmedia.com

On Twitter: @bex_zim