Seed company shuts down Saskatchewan plant in favour of local facility

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This article was published 29/10/2014 (4185 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

For a few years now, since the Bakken oil rush, Saskatchewan has been besting Manitoba in economic growth.

But the 80-year-old Winnipeg seed company, BrettYoung, is doing its part to reverse the trend. The company has just opened a multimillion-dollar seed treating and coating plant at its headquarters just outside the southwest corner of the city, and in the process will close its long-standing plant in Saskatoon.

The investment was decided when the company realized the Saskatoon plant did not have the capacity to keep up with demand from customers or the capabilities to treat the seeds to the increasing specificity of its clients.

“The Saskatoon plant had long ago exhausted its capacity and its capability,” said Calvin Sonntag, CEO of BrettYoung.

The highly automated 28,000-square-foot computer-controlled plant will not require a large workforce to operate it — between eight and 10 people — but it consolidates more of BrettYoung’s $100 million-plus annual business at its Winnipeg operations.

“We have been outsourcing (various seed treating and coating) to third parties all over North America,” Sonntag said. “The rationale was, bring it all in-house. Now we have a plant with that capacity and capability to meet current needs and the future needs of customers.”

BrettYoung, which is 100 per cent owned by Lloyd Dyck — and has been owned by the Dyck family for 40 years — markets thousands of different types of seeds and crop inputs, specializing in turf and forage seeds, as well as branded canola, corn and soybean seeds.

The company contracts for 50,000 acres of seed productions in Western Canada and also has three other cleaning and distribution facilities.

The company does not disclose financial results, but Sonntag said it has doubled in size in the past five years and before that had doubled over the previous 10 years.

“This investment is one indication that we have confidence in the future of the agriculture industry and our ability to bring value and provide a real difference to farmers,” said Sonntag. “The expectation is that we will continue to grow the business.”

Like just about every business, BrettYoung experienced a hiccup during the 2008 recession. There was a significant decline in demand for turf grass with the crash of the U.S. housing market. But with the company’s breadth and depth of business — it is active in several different industry sectors and exports to 40 countries — it has been able to grow.

“There is no slow time for us,” he said. “We are buying all the time. When one market might be down, others are growing. It does help smooth out the results.”

All BrettYoung’s canola seeds are coated with blends of insecticide and fungicides. A number of its forage legumes, forage grasses and turf grasses are coated based on various end-user demand and consumer preferences.

Grass seeds are coated to add weight and improve the seeding process.

Cory Baseraba, the chief operating officer of BrettYoung said, “Imagine trying to plant grass seed on windy day. It’s light and fluffy. By increasing the weight, the seed flows better though automatic seeders and provides better ground contact. We will also apply micro-nutrient inoculants to help the seeds establish to form a good crop.”

martin.cash@freepress.mb.ca