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.

Denis Vielfaure-Hylife Foods:

It's a total of about 250 new jobs that we're adding to the operation.

The bulk of these jobs are on the cutting floor where the fabrication of the pieces of meat are done and then there's a little bit then after that sprinkled throughout the other department, the shipping and maintenance etceteras etceteras.

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 percent extra throughput and with pretty much the same product mix that we've had. The compliment we've had is a balance of export and domestic.

Vielfaure says Hylife Foods does a lot of fresh chilled export business to Asia, specifically Japan, it serves the domestic market, a little bit in Canada, a little bit in the U.S. and Mexico and the balance is 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 product to supply to its customers.

For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.