Western Canadian Pork Producers Scrambling Following Olymel Closure

Feb 18, 2021

Pork producers are scrambling following the temporary closure of one of the largest hog slaughter facilities in the country due to a major COVID-19 outbreak.

Tyler Fulton, Director of Risk Management at Hams Marketing Services, commented on the situation at the Olymel Plant in Red Deer, Alberta.

"It's early days but it's no doubt a tough blow. When you've got an industry that is set-up really with just-in-time delivery on their live animals, any time a significant plant goes down for an extended period of time, it really makes it difficult to help manage the flows," he said. "We're all hoping that first of all that employees will be healthy and be able to return soon and that the total impact on the industry is limited to hopefully just a few days or at most a few weeks."

Olymel has informed all hog suppliers of the Red Deer plant on the situation and has suspended all pending deliveries until further notice.

As for the markets, Fulton says they have really taken off over the last two or three weeks.

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Video: Learning to Wrench From Dad the Hard Way

Harvest is a week out and the farm picked this week to fall apart. The truck needs a battery, the barn curtain's got a problem, and the corn and beans are telling us we're out of time to get it all fixed.

So it's a full day of wrenching. Tork supervises while I get the truck back running, then we're out at the hog barn where one rusted up part has the whole curtain system hung up. Ladder work, cable work, and a little dad-and-son disagreement about the right way to do it. We close it out walking the fields, shelling beans and checking corn, because whether everything's fixed or not, harvest starts when harvest starts.

Chapters: 00:00 Everything breaks the week before harvest 01:00 Tork supervises while I fix the truck 12:30 Out to the barn to find the curtain problem 14:30 One rusty part hung up the whole curtain 20:00 Running the curtain cable from the ladder 24:00 Walking the beans and corn before harvest 26:30 Wrapping up

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