Sargent
Farms and
Boire & Freres
of Quebec will be building
a new hatchery in Woodstock.
“We are pleased to see this kind of investment in hatchery capacity and infrastructure in the Ontario chicken industry value chain,” said Henry Zantingh, chairman of Chicken Farmers of Ontario.
“Our
chicken farmers have a strong relationship with their local
hatcheries and depend heavily on the quality and service we receive
from our chick suppliers in order to ensure that our production meets
the evolving needs of our customers and our consumers.”
Chicken
board president and chief executive officer Rob Dougans said
“Ontario’s
chicken industry has been experiencing significant growth over recent
years, and CFO has been working to ensure that all stakeholders
including chicken farmers, chicken processors and hatcheries
understand the importance of meeting local consumer markets by
continuously improving our business standards, assets and production
practices.
“The
introduction of a new modern hatchery to the Ontario system will
further enable the quality, service, flexibility, and sustainability
of the Ontario chick supply.”
The new hatchery, called Thames River Hatchery, is expected to be open by the third quarter of 2017.
It
costs about
$10 million and will
have
an initial capacity of 20 million chicks per year.
CFO
farmer-members are expected to grow almost 220 million chickens this
year.
