Hytek has purchased four finishing barns in Leroy, Saskatchewan, each capable of accommodating about ten thousand pigs ranging from 50 to 60 pounds up 260 pound marketing weight.

Hytek vice president of production and genetics Claude Vielfaure says the production facilities are being populated now and will supply finished hogs for the company's Neepawa pork processing plant.

Claude Vielfaure-Hytek Limited

Essentially, since our purchase of Springhill Farms last year, a year ago, we are looking to bring back more of our US destination pigs to Canada so we're able to process them in our Springhill plant.

These animals will be coming from our sow barns in Manitoba.

Again, those pigs from those sow barns were being sold in the US so now we're going to take those pigs from those sow barns and move them directly to these Leroy barns and finish them there and then take the market hogs and bring them back to our Neepawa plant.

We are killing approximately 900 thousand pigs a year at Springhill farms now and, once we finish our wastewater plant which hopefully will be done by the spring 2010, we'll be able to bring capacity up 1.4 million pigs a year.

Mr Vielfaure says the market hogs will be processed into fresh and frozen pork products for sale domestically and around the world.

He notes demands are different depending on where the pork is sold with the domestic market looking for the back ribs, the loins, the hams and so on where as the Asian markets are looking for the legs, the heads and other parts of the pig that we don't normally eat in North America.