(Montreal) Les Éleveurs de porcs du Québec have trouble digesting Olymel’s decision to reduce its Quebec purchases by 15,000 pigs per week as of next March.
The decision comes at a time when they are still managing the surpluses caused by the four-month strike at the Olymel plant in Vallée-Jonction and the pandemic, which had severely affected the activities of slaughterhouses around the world.
Olymel announced Friday that it will cease slaughtering activities at the Princeville plant next spring to devote itself entirely to cutting. This decision will necessarily lead to a reduction in the company’s slaughter capacity, which will translate into a reduction in its purchases of 15,000 hogs per week from Quebec and 10,000 hogs per week from Ontario.
Quebec breeders believe this is nonsense, especially after the Quebec government invested $ 150 million in the business this year. They say that Quebec breeders should not bear the brunt of the restructuring of Olymel and that Quebec pigs should be given priority.
“Quebec consumers, those who buy our meat, are proud to buy Quebec pork raised by families here,” denounced the president of Quebec pig breeders, David Duval, in a press release.
“Olymel must reiterate its values as a Quebec flagship. The whole business model of the pork industry can be shaken. Once again, it is the pork companies, which are our pride and who shine through their world-renowned know-how, which will suffer the impacts, ”he added.
Labor shortage causing reduction
Olymel justifies the end of logging activities in Princeville by the need to maintain a production of value-added cuts, which it could not do without redirecting the work of Princeville employees due to a critical lack of manpower. ‘artwork.
“When there is a lack of manpower, there is a lack of packaging, deboning, we end up with basic cuts to the cut and that, unfortunately, these days, in the current market, it is “is not a profitable operation,” said the company’s senior vice-president, Paul Beauchamp, in an interview with The Canadian Press.
“It is in this context that we told producers that we had to reduce our purchases, because we cannot continue to produce and lose money,” he insisted.
Olymel points out that Ontario supplies a little less than 25,000 pigs per week to its slaughterhouses, against a little more than 100,000 Quebec hogs, Quebec remaining overwhelmingly the main supplier of the company. Mr. Beauchamp also argues that the company has long-term contracts with Ontario suppliers that it must honor.
“We have a long-term relationship with Ontario that we didn’t want to sacrifice either, because when there was a shortage of pigs, it was the people of Ontario who provided us with it at one point. which made it possible to maintain our slaughter capacity, ”he recalls.
As for the sums granted by Quebec, these took the form of an investment that made the Quebec state a shareholder holding approximately 6% of Olymel’s shares and if the government wanted to make representations, it could make them. directly to the board table.