Neepawa hog plant down for three days

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Published on Tuesday, February 28, 2017

By Ken Waddell

The Neepawa Press/Neepawa Banner

In what was described as the “most serious delay ever”, HyLife CEO Guy Baudry described the three day shut down at the hog processing plant. “The unit that is used to stun the hogs went down. It wasn’t the mechanical part, it was the brains of the unit,” said Baudry.

The unit in question, which uses carbon dioxide gas to put the hogs into a comatose state before they are processed, was shut down for the best part of three days. “That’s 6,700 hogs per day that backed up in the system,” noted Baudry. He went on to heap praise on the staff, as HyLife is as much farm as it is slaughter plant, and staff at the plant and in the barns had to make adjustments on the fly.

“We also have excellent equipment suppliers,” he said, as a technician had to come from Denmark to get the unit running again. Local staff also went to work to bring older equipment into working readiness so hog processing could start back up on Thursday. “We will have to double shift through the weekend to get caught up and again our staff have been great, they have really pulled together to get us back up and running.”

HyLife employs around 1,200 people at the Neepawa plant and has production barns across Manitoba and Saskatchewan to supply 6,700 hogs per day, five day a week to the plant. “Because of everyone’s efforts,” said Baudry, “there will be little to no disruption for our customers.”