By Trudy Kelly Forsythe – Farm Credit Canada
“It will be a record year for the plant in all aspects – revenue, volume, kilograms sales, dollar sales, driving down costs; all those things have been significant in the last year,” Bruce Andrews, ABP’s procurement and logistics manager, told a group of producers gathered in Truro, N.S., for the fourth annual Maritime Beef Conference in mid-March.
The federally inspected beef slaughter and processing facility began production in 2004 in a plant built to process 500 animals a week. This year, they hit 604 in one five-day week.
Andrews says ABP’s success starts with the quality that goes into its brands, including P.E.I. Certified Beef, Blue Dot Reserve Beef and the most recently launched Island View Farms Beef.
“Quality is how do we branch out and how we find new markets so we can continue to build”
“How do we tell our story, how do we branch out and how do we find new markets so we can continue to build? It starts with quality,” Andrews says.
As far as telling a story, Andrews says it has to be backed by authenticity. As a result, ABP requires some steps like record keeping for data such as treatment of animals and, recording tag information from the producers who follow the beef programs.
ABP takes finished cattle by grade and on Tuesdays, sets a consistent price for all local producers for the following week. There are bonuses and discounts offered to work with producers to hit the plant’s target range of between 700 and 900 pounds.
ABP is looking at how to expand local, value and niche markets, as well as expanding the plant to add new equipment to add more value-added products.
“There’s no way we’re ever going to be the kings against the JBS’s and the Cargill’s,” Andrews says, “but everything we can do to niche off, to create more value in the chain, is more that goes into the plant that we can share back to the producers.”
Source: Meatbusiness