Friesen Bio Ag Manitoba recently opened a new facility in Headingly, MB just west of Winnipeg. Friesen Livestock Nutrition is all about family coming from a rich background and tradition of excellence in the livestock feed industry, Dick Friesen and two of his sons, Edward and Dennis, decided to keep it in the family. They launched Friesen Livestock in 2002 with a dream of building their own family based business. With hard work, dedication and a focus on family values, their business quickly grew. Today, Friesen operates throughout Western Canada and the North Western United States, with an eye on the world.

“We continue to honor the family traditions that have carried us this far; hard work, dedication and trust,” states the company website. “These principles are evident throughout our company. Our dedicated staff are all part of the Friesen family and strives to earn our customers business every day.”

In a telephone interview with the owners, brothers Ed and Dennis Friesen, nutritionists Vic Pouteaux and Michael Shaw, Ed explains what the grand opening of their new business near Winnipeg means to them.

“Well it means that our company is expanding in Manitoba to the Manitoba livestock markets as a premix company, a micro macro premix company and we’re opening our sixth location and so we are growing,” said Ed. “We manufacture and blend vitamins and minerals macro and micro premixes in Medicine Hat, Alberta.”

Nutritionist Vic Pouteaux, partnered with the company seven years ago has worked in Manitoba numerous times with previous companies like Landmark Feeds and Elite Swine. How does the company and products benefit the Manitoba livestock producer? “You can appreciate the world is changing as it relates to drug usage and the need for desires to go more antibiotic pre-production perhaps and those kinds of things,” said Pouteaux.

“We are very active in that area where in the last five or six years our company is working with nutriceuticals, essential oils, probiotics, prebiotics, and organic acids, a whole list of products that you can use in animal feed to make those top performing herds work,” added Pouteaux.

He says Friesen Bio feeds some of the top performing herds in all genetics because they are active in Montana, Alberta, Saskatchewan, and now with this new business opening, in Manitoba also.

“Michael Schalm, is the other nutritionist and partner and we work together and there are a number of products that don’t exist in Manitoba at the moment from many other companies as it relates to the use of fibres and the use of probiotics, the use of essential oils and spices and so that is an area we think we can bring something new to Manitoba,” said Pouteaux.

Next partner Dennis Friesen outlines the structure of the company. “Our first and only manufacturing facility is in Medicine Hat. The idea of the company started in 1999 and active in 2000, starting business as a millennial company,” said Dennis. “A year or two later we expanded to Lethbridge with our first service branch. All our branches except for Medicine Hat are service branches and what that means is, we blend these micro and macro products and distribute them to the service branches.”

The expansions continued with including Great Falls, Montana opening a year after Lethbridge, and then in 2009, they opened another in Drumheller. Two years after and the company tries to line up expansion and new service centres with the management team, so when Michael Schalm came on board who lives in Red Deer, they opened the fifth location.

“This concept of a sixth branch is a bit of a homecoming for us, while not born in Manitoba, both Ed and I were raised in southern Manitoba,” said Dennis. “We feel this was a long time coming, felt the time is now, there is a lot of family here, a lot of history, traditions in what is happening today,” he says.

Michael Schalm says the strength of the company is flexibility and the ability to bring technology specific to the farm and adapt it to each of the different farm situations they work with.

“We’re nimble, we’re creative, we’re responsive and we’re really grounded at the farm level as a company and so we can take the big world research and drill it down and apply it to specific farms,” said Schalm. •

— By Harry Siemens