October 2, 2012

                                                                                                   

Cargill plans to build second rapeseed crusher in central Alberta

In time for the 2014 harvest, Cargill intends to build a second Canadian rapeseed crushing and processing plant in central Alberta.

 

Cargill brass were at Camrose, Alberta on Monday (Oct 1) to launch work on an 850,000-tonne-per-year crush plant just south of the community, about 80 kilometres southeast of Edmonton.

 

"The facility will have the capacity to process both conventional and specialty rapeseed, which will enable us to significantly increase our contracting programmes in the area," Ken Stone, Cargill's commercial manager for Canadian rapeseed processing, said in a release.

 

A spokesperson for Cargill, which already runs the largest rapeseed crushing plant in Canada at Clavet, Saskatchewan, said it has found Camrose to be a "consistent competitive point of delivery" for rapeseed growers in the region. Cargill said it expects to source rapeseed within a 300-kilometre radius of the new facility.

 

Cargill's fellow processing giants Bunge and ADM operate crush plants respectively at Fort Saskatchewan, Alberta, about 100 kilometres north, and at Lloydminster, Alberta, about 225 kilometres east.

 

"Rapeseed continues to be a very competitive crop for the Canadian grower and Camrose is an excellent location for value-added rapeseed processing," Mark Stonacek, president of Cargill's North American grain and oilseed business, said in the company's release.

 

In 2012-13, he said, rapeseed acres in Canada were over 21 million, indicating the rapeseed industry "will continue to grow, driven by competitive access to a large North American livestock industry for rapeseed protein meal and continued strong demand for rapeseed oil."

 

Cargill's other facilities at Camrose include the animal nutrition plant it built there in 1982, a Cargill AgHorizons grain elevator on the north side of town and an office for the company's specialty rapeseed programme.

 

The company expects the move will position "Cargill, the Camrose area and the Alberta farmer for future growth in the rapeseed business," he said.

 

The Alberta Canola Producers Commission noted in a separate release Monday (Oct 1) that the planned Camrose plant would be the first new crusher to be built in the province in over three decades.

 

"While other Alberta rapeseed facilities have re-tooled and expanded, all new plants have been constructed in eastern Saskatchewan," the ACPC said.

 

Central Alberta, meanwhile, "is a large rapeseed growing area and Camrose has good rail and highway connections to the rest of Alberta," ACPC director Jack Moser, who farms nearby at Killam, Alberta, said in the same release.

 

By capacity comparison, Cargill's Clavet crush plant can process about 1.5 million tonnes of rapeseed per year. The proposed scale of the Camrose plant is about on par with the Yorkton, Saskatchewan facility run by LDM Foods, a joint venture of Louis Dreyfus and Mitsui.

 

Cargill also announced last month it will add a rapeseed oil refinery operation at the Clavet plant.