MOOSE JAW — A meat packing house name, once a major Moose Jaw employer, is re-emerging.
Maple Leaf Foods is spinning off the pork division into a company called Canada Packers.
The new Canada Packers will have $1.7 billion in annual sales, raise 1.7 million hogs in Manitoba and process four million hogs in plants at Brandon, Man. and Lethbridge, Alta.
Canada Packers operated a meat processing plant on South Hill for decades before building a new plant on the city’s west end. The company employed hundreds of people through the years.
In 1991, the local plant was closed when Maple Leaf Mills and Canada Packers merged.
The Moose Jaw plant was sold to the Mitchell meat processing company and the province, later purchased by XL Beef, who shuttered it in 2010.
The former beef plant is now North 49 Foods, processing pork. Maple Leaf said the new company will realize the company’s potential value on the market.
The pork division sales are down by 4.2 per cent.
Ron Walter can be reached at [email protected]
