Maple Lodge Farms Ltd. is closing the chicken-processing plant at Beamsville that it bought from Grand River Foods Inc.
The deal closed this month and then about 100 employees at Beamsville learned they have lost their jobs.
The chickens will be processed at Maple Lodge’s high-volume plant at Norval, which is next door to Mississauga.
Maple Lodge is second only to Maple Leaf Foods Inc. in chicken-processing volume in Ontario and this deal to purchase Grand River’s volume may put it on top.
Grand River said it will use the money – they don’t say how much – to continue expanding its further-processing operations at Cambridge and perhaps to buy other companies in the further-processing business.
Maple Lodge is partnering with a farmer-owned co-operative to build a new chicken-processing plant in Nova Scotia. The fate of its plant, Nadeau Poultry, in New Brunswick remains uncertain since rival Sunnymel began construction of a plant nearby that will be large enough to handle all of New Brunswick’s chicken production.
Maple Lodge has tried, but failed, to persuade the New Brunswick government to intervene to ensure continued chicken supplies for its plant there.
Another deal that’s in the works, but not yet implemented, would stop inter-provincial movement of chicken between Ontario and Quebec. That would involve major changes in which farmers will be supplying which chicken-processing plants in each of the provinces.
