By Bruce Cochrane.
The Chair of the Saskatchewan Pork Development Board says anticipated expanded U.S. pork processing capacity will offer added incentive for expanded pork production in western Canada.
Growth in the U.S. Midwest pork industry was discussed earlier this month as part of the National Pork Industry Conference in Wisconsin Dells.
Sask Pork Chair Florian Possberg says due to reduced U.S. hog numbers due to PED, higher beef prices and problems in chicken production 2014 was very profitable, resulting in significant growth in U.S. pork production and now we're seeing interest in additional processing capacity.
Florian Possberg-Saskatchewan Pork Development Board:
Because we've had growth in production in the last two years, we expect that the end of this year, early next year we're really going to put a lot of stress on the current processing capacity that we have in the mid-west.
That being said there's a brand new Triumph Seaboard plant going up in Sioux City that is going to be a world class large plant.
There's a beef plant being modified in Wyndham, Minnesota that we expect will come on stream some time late this year, early to mid next year, a new plant also in Michigan, Clarence Food plant that is a quite large scale and Prestage Farm and I believe there's one other smaller plant that are also putting the pieces in place to develop slaughter plants as well.
Although we'll be quite stressed in terms of capacity this fall, once we get through this glut period, we should see about 10 percent additional slaughter capacity in the U.S. within the next two years.
Possberg says the anticipated expanded U.S. processing capacity will created added incentive for increased hog production in western Canada.
Source: Farmscape