Great West Beef and Bison ceases operations 
The Board Directors of the Great West Beef and Bison have decided the timing is not right to pursue their livestock processing plans in the Southwest.
Last Friday the doors to the Great West Beef and Bison office in Swift Current closed and the project was put in mothballs for a potential future attempt.
“The Great West Beef and Bison Committee has decided to shut down operations. And I guess it’s not something that we wanted to do, but I think it’s a case of necessity,” explained board chairperson Jim Parsons. “We have ongoing expenses and we just don’t want to burn up money.”
Parsons was quick to point out that it was never a supply issue that caused the board to rethink their project.
“It was a money issue. The packing plant concept, as I said, I think our business plan was good. It allowed probably a three year, four year stint when you wouldn’t make money, but it allowed enough money in the plan to carry it until it was stable and functioning.”
“When you talk $41 or $45 million, for producers put up that kind of money, is impossible. There is not enough return on a packing plant to carry a heavy debt load.”
“The only way that I think our committee sees that this thing can possibly work would be, maybe an interest free guaranteed or government loan, or something where we would take money off the animals as they come in to buy the producer’s shares and pay the loan back. That’s the only way this would work.”
During their three years in operation, Great West Beef changed their focus in order to get their project off the ground.
“One of the big obstacles was that we had gone from the packing plant concept to the assembly yard idea, and we were hoping to ship cattle to a packing plant or a slaughter house, but we haven’t been able to secure a slaughter house that would kill for us, and so it really left us with no where to go and we just decided that we had to close down operations.”
Parsons noted that one bright spot was that the committee was able to return $47,000 back to their original producer investors.
“I think there’s some positives to be had here. We do have a business plan that cost us $250,000. It’s a good business plan for a packing plant, and should things change in the next few months, it can still be revisited. The committee doesn’t just want to quit and disappear here. We’ve agreed to meet again in a couple of months. Maybe talk to the two government’s who are involved.”
“We also have a business plan to do an assembly yard, and it looked very favourable other than the fact that we can’t secure a contract to have people kill for us. So both of those business plans are available.”
He noted the committee will be meeting again in a couple of months, and depending on the political climate, may pursue the project once more.
“We need something here and we need a packing plant here. We have the cattle here, and we should be doing the processing here.”
“Of course there’s disappointment in the fact that we don’t have a packing plant. I guess I still staunchly believe that this is the area for one. We have the cattle here. We’re paying a lot of freight in the cattle that we ship today, and the freight probably would, in over 20 years or 25 years, the freight would probably build a packing plant.”
|