Harvest Manitoba wants to transform lives, curb food waste with ambitious plans for new facility, CEO says

The province’s largest food bank is raising funds and searching for a new headquarters location that will allow it to double the number of families it serves.

Harvest Manitoba is moving forward with its proposed Manitoba Food Transformation Centre, a $30-million facility that will recover, process and distribute food that would otherwise go to waste. The non-profit aims to open the centre during its 2028-29 fiscal year.

CEO Vince Barletta outlined Harvest Manitoba’s vision for the facility during a keynote address at a Manitoba Chambers of Commerce event Tuesday.

“We need a transformation in our approach to food security here in Manitoba and here in Canada,” Barletta told a crowd of business leaders and politicians at the Delta Hotel. “(The centre) will not only help us transform food, but ultimately, transform lives through the work that we do to bring food-security programs all across our province.”

The number of Manitobans using food banks rose from 50,000 per month in 2024 to 60,000 last year.

Harvest Manitoba’s busiest month in 2025 was October, when the organization served 63,116 people — a number that would fill Princess Auto Stadium, Canada Life Centre, Blue Cross Park and the Keystone Centre in Brandon combined, Barletta said.

At the same time, $50 billion worth of food is wasted in Canada annually, he said, adding that food waste is responsible for 10 per cent of global greenhouse-gas emissions.

The 100,000-square-foot Manitoba Food Transformation Centre will include flash-freezing technology to preserve fresh produce; a commercial kitchen to prepare 10,000 meals each week for food programs across the province; bagging and sorting stations for potatoes, eggs and bulk products; and expanded cold storage.

The facility will allow Harvest Manitoba to deliver food to 20,000 additional families and help hundreds of people prepare for employment through its warehouse training program, Barletta said.

The centre will be funded through a public-private partnership, with equal investments sought from the federal government, the province and the community, according to the organization’s website.

“We still have work to do to raise the money and to find the site,” Barletta said.

“We’re not at the finish line yet, but I’m confident with the support that we have had from government, from the private sector (and) from the agri-food industry that we can get this project done for Manitoba.”

The need for food banks has doubled since 2020, he added.

“We need to find new ways to do things,” he said. “I would love to be able to say that we expect the demand for food banks to go down in the coming years, but that’s probably not realistic.”

Kyle Mason, executive director at Food Matters Manitoba, said that while he is not familiar with Harvest Manitoba’s plans, food insecurity in the province is concerning.

“We have more than enough food to go around, but it’s not always (distributed) in a just way or in an equitable way,” he said. “I think it’s important to find ways — through existing networks, but also building new networks — where the people that need good healthy food can access it at a reasonable price.”

At the Manitoba Chambers of Commerce event, Access Credit Union president and CEO Myrna Wiebe spoke briefly about her organization’s decision to donate $250,000 to Harvest Manitoba’s food transformation centre project.

Access and Harvest Manitoba serve many of the same people, Wiebe said.

“One of our values, and certainly one of our pillars of our strategic plan, is to be involved in the communities,” she said. “And that’s what Harvest does, is feed and fuel and support our communities.”

Harvest Manitoba is currently headquartered in a 55,000-square-foot facility at 1085 Winnipeg Ave. The organization was founded in 1985 under the name Winnipeg Harvest.

aaron.epp@freepress.mb.ca