Food innovation in heart of downtown

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This article was published 04/04/2018 (2777 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Richardson International is building a $30-million innovation centre down the street from its Portage and Main headquarters as a testament to its commitment to downtown Winnipeg and its optimism for the Western Canadian agricultural industry.

Construction on the four-storey, 62,000-square-foot building on the southeast corner of Westbrook Street and Lombard Avenue — the current site of two surface parking lots — will begin next week.

Hartley Richardson, the CEO of James Richardson & Sons, the multi-billion-dollar family owned business, and chair of Richardson International, the grain-handling and food processing division, said the new development is a continuation of its commitment to downtown Winnipeg that started in 1965 with the development of the company’s office tower at Portage and Main.

“That building is now the corporate head office of James Richardson & Sons as well as five subsidiaries. Our roots run deep in Winnipeg and we are very proud to call it home,” he said.

“Our vision has long been to see downtown Winnipeg reach its potential as the centre of excellence for the agricultural industry. Today, that vision takes a giant step closer to becoming a reality.”

The Richardson Innovation Centre will become the headquarters for the company’s food innovation teams. Richardson International, one of the largest originator and exporter of canola and oats in North America, also owns two large canola processing facilities in Western Canada and five oat processing facilities in Canada, the U.S. and the U.K.

The new centre will bring food science and technician teams in from across the country to work in a modern, spacious facility.

Chuck Cohen, Richardson International’s senior vice-president technology, said, “As we move into new products and new businesses and new product lines there will be lots of room for expansion to help that team grow.”

The company has been talking about establishing such a research and development centre for a few years. Curt Vossen, the CEO of Richardson International, said it is part of the evolution of the company over the past 20 years from being strictly a grain handling and merchandising company into one that includes a billion-dollar crop input retail operation and canola and oats processing operation.

“We are now looking at a company that is very much involved in a variety of different things — agricultural products, grain merchandising, inputs retailing… the whole business of processing raw agricultural material into much more finished products,” he said. “So we are basically in the food and ingredients business.”

The building, which is scheduled to be completed in 2020, will be the workplace for about 100 people initially with the capacity for twice as many people.

Designed by Winnipeg’s Number Ten Architectural Group, the new building will feature a 20-metre-high glass atrium and inside of that a sculptural glass staircase set in front of a wood feature wall.

“The atrium will be a glowing lantern and a focal point in the downtown, opening the building to the urban surroundings, something you don’t typically see with lab buildings,” said Brent Bellamy, Number Ten’s creative director.

Vossen and Richardson made the point that the design and presentation of the building was almost as important as its functionality.

“We have owned the property for about 30 years and we were waiting for the right opportunity,” Richardson said. “We looked at other alternative sites but we agreed it would be inconsistent with our commitment to downtown. We decided this was the right time and place to use the lot and build a dramatic, good looking building, instead of another box.”

The building will have three-metre windows that will allow pedestrians to glimpse the equipment inside and the second storey will cantilever five metres over the sidewalk “in a gesture like no other in the city,” Bellamy said.

“I think that will become the signature of the building and a real feature for downtown,” he said.

Company officials said it will become another asset in the city to collaborate with the food science work at the University of Manitoba and the culinary arts department at Red River College, as well as the Canadian International Grains Institute and the Food Development Centre in Portage la Prairie.

Vossen said the investment is not being done out of any sense of competitive urgency.

“It is about our optimism about the future. If we wanted to be casual about it, we wouldn’t do it (at all),” Vossen said. “And I can guarantee we would not need to do it like this. We could put it in a box in an industrial park. But that is not the point.

“We want to make a statement,” he said. “It is not about ego. It is about who we are as a company. We are a proud Canadian company. We want to bring the best technology and solutions… and do it the way we do everything else, in a practical, but elegant way.”

martin.cash@freepress.mb.ca