The Chair of the Saskatchewan Slaughter Plant Initiative says that efforts to bring a new primary pork processing plant to Saskatchewan remain on target for a projected September 2009 opening.

Partners in the project include Saskatchewan First Nations, the Saskatchewan Pork Development Board and Big Sky Farms.  The proposed new plant will be located in Saskatoon’s north industrial area and have an initial capacity of one million head per year, expandable to two million head on a double shift.

Initiative Chair Jim Ramsay says an extensive evaluation shows the plan is economically feasible and that it is a sound business concept. “We took an extra month to make sure that we had full consideration of the pressures that are in the industry and we reworked the numbers a couple of times over just to make sure we had a good conservative view of what was happening to see if this was based on sound business principles,” he explains. “Our plan was to get things going into the summer, possibly into the fall with opening in September of 2009 and we have not had to adjust those dates as of yet.”

Ramsay says the business development process focused on marketing and there is interest being expressed by potential marketing partners.  He notes discussions aimed at securing the 100 million dollars needed to finance the first stage of development are underway and remain on track.