Nearly four years after acquiring the shuttered XL/JBS Beef plant west of Moose Jaw, SK, North 49 Foods Ltd. cut the ribbon during a star-studded ceremony on Oct. 27.
Allan Leung, CEO of North 49’s parent company Donald’s Fine Foods, and Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe cut the ribbon jointly following remarks by Leung, Moe, provincial Minister of Agriculture David Marit, Moose Jaw Mayor Clive Tolley, Director-General of PrairiesCan Doug Zolinsky, MP Fraser Tolmie, and Toby Tschetter, board chair of the Saskatchewan Pork Development Board.
“I would like to acknowledge our valued partners, producers, customers, and industry processors, and everyone else who has travelled from Asia, the USA, and across Canada to be here,” Leung said in his address. “I would also like to welcome the Honourable Premier Scott Moe, Mayor Clive Tolley, and the dignitaries from our federal, provincial, and municipal governments.
“Welcome to North 49 Foods, a member of the Donald’s Fine Foods group that was established 30 years ago by my father, Donald.”
Donald and Julia Leung were seated in the front row for the occasion and joined the line-up for the ribbon cutting. Several speakers, including Premier Scott Moe, told the story of how Donald and Julia immigrated from Hong Kong in the ‘70s and seized the Canadian dream.
“Congratulations on your 30-year anniversary, most certainly,” Moe told the Leung family. “That entrepreneurial spirit has brought you here to invest, and I would say that our province and this community couldn’t be happier that you have done so.”
Donald’s Fine Foods now operates six pork processing sites, employs over 1,000 people, and ships its products to 25 countries around the world. North 49 Foods is their largest facility to date, and their most expensive, with an investment of over $60 million.
The company has operated Thunder Creek Pork in Moose Jaw since 2010, where they employ approximately 275 people. Allan Leung negotiated the purchase of the XL Beef plant in 2019, and the company set to work on years of renovation and re-construction to turn the 120,000 square foot building into a state-of-the-art, federally inspected sow processing facility.
North 49 Foods will have about 80 employees at start-up, increasing to 200 once the plant reaches full capacity.
“North 49 Foods will be Canada’s largest sow processing plant, and we’re located close to our producers,” Leung said. “With this new facility, we can help the industry reduce the following issues, such as border issues with live animals, the flow of animal diseases coming back to Canada, freight costs for producers, and greatly reduce the carbon footprint from transportation.”
The plant has a capacity of 120 sows per hour. Once up to speed, it could potentially handle the entire 225,000 sows culled annually in Western Canada.
“On behalf of pork producers in Saskatchewan and across Canada, I want to congratulate North 49 Foods, the City of Moose Jaw, and the province of Saskatchewan in opening this new state-of-the-art facility,” said Tschetter with Sask Pork. “Before today, producers have been almost completely dependent on export markets at the destination of our culled sows. This facility will provide an excellent local market opportunity for these animals in Western Canada.
“This will result in a significant improvement in animal welfare conditions and reduce cross-border movements. It will also significantly improve bio-security for our industry and reduce our greenhouse gas footprint. … I want to thank the leadership of North 49 Foods for their vision and commitment to the pork industry in Saskatchewan and Western Canada. Good job, you guys!”Capping off the opening ceremony, Leung and his parents presented two $50,000 cheques (a total of $100,000) to representatives of local charities. Kelly McElree of the Moose Jaw Health Foundation (which supports Moose Jaw’s Dr. F.H. Wigmore Regional Hospital), and Terry Smith of the Moose Jaw & District Food Bank expressed their deep gratitude for the funds, which they said would have profound positive effects for the people of Moose Jaw and the surrounding areas.
There was a producer event and tour the same afternoon.
Because of the bespoke, proprietary nature of the equipment and layout of the plant, no photos were allowed on the plant tour following the ribbon-cutting ceremony.
The tour, led by proud company executives, revealed just how much work has gone into developing the plant’s receiving, processing, and distribution capabilities. As is typical of food processing facilities like North 49 Foods, the receiving and distributing platforms are kept highly separate. Per standard procedure, the tour began at distribution and worked backward towards receiving to minimize any possibility of contamination.
The main difference in equipment between a sow processing plant and a pork plant is the disparity in weight between cull sows and market hogs.
A live market hog typically weighs around 250 to 275 lbs, while a cull sow can weigh between 300 to 600 lbs. The plant’s equipment is therefore extremely sturdy and well reinforced.
From the enormous receiving pens, cull sows are individually tagged before making their way to the CO2 stunning pit. Leung said the pit was the single biggest investment the plant needed, and results in less stress for the animals, creating a higher-quality end product.
Each animal is checked multiple times for disease and infection as it makes its way through a sophisticated series of processing stations that turns almost every part of the animal into usable product.
“All our machines are now PLC-controlled, versus more manual processes before. The CO2 stunning is definitely one of the newer features we’re using, which is a very big investment,” Leung said.
He added, “In terms of other technologies we employ, obviously we can’t say too much. But we are, obviously, following modern day processing (standards) to ensure that we have more control, more computers, and more systems to help us make sure the process runs smoothly.”
All Western Canadian hog producers are set to benefit as North 49 Foods begins ramping up its production capacity. Moreover, Leung said his company now owns another 100 acres of industrial and commercial land near the new plant, setting the stage for even more investment and development — potentially creating one of North America’s most important pork industry hubs, just outside Moose Jaw. •
— By Gordon Edgar
