August 14, 2012

Hylife Foods is expected to complete its freshly expanded hog slaughtering facility in Neepawa, Canada, by the end of 2012.

In 2008, LaBroquerie based Hylife, formerly Hytek Limited, purchased the Springhill Farms hog slaughtering plant in Neepawa with the intention of expanding the facility's processing capacity.

About two weeks ago after a series of upgrades, which included the construction of a new industrial wastewater treatment plant followed by the addition of a new carcass cooler and receiving facility, the renamed Hylife Foods plant added a second shift.

Hylife Foods Chief Operating Officer, Denis Vielfaure, says the bricks and mortar are now in place and it's a matter of ramping up production.

"It's a total of about 250 new jobs that we're adding to the operation," said Denis Vielfaure of Hylife Foods.

"The bulk of these jobs are on the cutting floor where the fabrication of the pieces of meat are done.

"As far as capacity, it'll bring it to about 28 thousand hogs a week from 18 thousand hogs a week so it's 50% more throughput and with mainly the same product mix."

Vielfaure says Hylife Foods does a lot of fresh chilled export business to Asia, specifically Japan. It serves the domestic market with some in Canada, US and Mexico and the balance shipped into the frozen international market.

He says Hylife has essentially established its customer base but the company has had stronger demand than supply for some of those markets, specifically the export fresh chilled market, so the expansion will give the company more products to supply to its customers.