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10 more years: Agribition renews agreement with Evraz place

Jun 25, 2018 | 7:59 AM

Regina will continue to see rodeos and cattle shows for another decade now that Canadian Western Agribition and Regina Exhibition Association Limited (REAL) signed a new agreement Friday.

This is Agribition’s first long-term deal in its 50-year history and keeps about $750 million in Saskatchewan.

Agribition CEO Chris Lane said although the event has always been in Regina, there were times he wasn’t so sure and he wanted some security moving forward.

“Now I can actually add an Agribition 2027 document on my desk that we can work on,” he said. “For Agribition to be able to grow, we were looking for something that offered consistency and stability to plan year over year growth, and this gets us there.”

Lane said many things contributed to the agreement.

“It’s a combination of the right economic conditions, the right facilities (and) the right people in the room.”

President and CEO of REAL, Tim Reid, said the decision was an easy one.

“When we brought this to our Board of Directors, it was a unanimous decision in minutes that they wanted a 10-year deal and made it easy to get it done,” he said.

According to Reid, the agreement didn’t take too long to negotiate — it started in early March and they completed it a couple weeks ago.

This year’s Agribition runs from Nov. 19-24.