There have been a couple of large items that have been happening in Canada’s food industry that I wanted to touch upon today.
First of all, the federal government has decided to end the monopoly of the Canadian Wheat Board. Currently, the Canadian Wheat Board does all of the marketing for exporting of Western Canada’s wheat, durum and barley. The government states that this could be a very good change for business, as it would allow farmers to sell their grain to anyone they want to. According to Stephen Vandervalk, the president of the Grain Growers of Canada, this will present the opportunity for grain processors to sign contracts directly with farmers in order to ensure they will be able to get the supplies they need to, where they weren’t able to do that with the Canadian Wheat Board.
Second point of interest for today is that one of Canada’s largest food processors, Maple Leaf Foods, has announced that it’s going to be closing plants in Toronto, Hamilton, Kitchener, Moncton, WInnipeg and North Battleford (Saskatchewan). Due to building a new meat plant in Hamilton and upgrading plants in Winnipeg, Saskatoon and Brampton (Ontario), all in all there will be a net loss of 1550 jobs at Maple Leaf. The plant closings will be completed by the end of 2014.