News

FCL invests $500K to bring Sask. food to Western Canadian market

Oct 05, 2019

A media event was held at the Food Centre on October 4th to announce the $500K from Federated Co-operatives Limited towards the Food Centre’s expansion project, which has a current value of $7.5 million.  The expansion will include construction of over 16,000 sq. ft of processing space and new processing equipment.  FCL’s investment is part of a $1Million industry contribution to the expansion and is a major contribution towards the foundational funding.

FCL’s funding will benefit local suppliers of products to FCL and provide increased capacity to address market growth for local products.  Our expansion project includes a new bottling line and pasteurization system for canning low-acid foods and was demonstrated at the media event.

“FCL’s contribution will help provide collaboration opportunities with local producers and will result in the expansion of agricultural production, and food processing labour and revenue in the province,” said Food Centre President Dan Prefontaine. “The partnership is part of a value-chain project connecting growers to manufacturing to retailers, with long-term benefits to the fruit and vegetable industry.”  — Dan Prefontaine, President of the Food Centre.

The fruit and vegetable industry is largely on a growth curve that supports fresh product sales and minimal value added processing.  This project, with ties to the retailer, supports the long-term strategy of increasing the value added processing activity through established marketing co-ops and producer groups.  The project will open the door for product diversity and allow for the incubation of new value added processing opportunities and growth of the production side of the fruit and vegetable industry.  It will directly increase utilization of all vegetable products to be converted to value added food products and in- turn support the locally grown movement within western Canada.  This will contribute to the target growth of the agri-food processing sector in Saskatchewan and lead to other opportunities in fresh, frozen and processed Saskatchewan grown ingredients for export markets.

FCL NEWS RELEASE: https://www.fcl.crs/news-reports/news/article/FCL-invests-in-Food-Centre-expansion