NGC plant at Pincher Creek?

[cowman]

They have a good article about this new packing plant being built at Pincher creek in the "Alberta Express".
Now this one makes some sense? 250 head of cows/day and process them completely? A biodigester built right into the factory. Employs 110 people!
Soil testing being done, construction starts Oct. 1 with a close in date before the snow flies! Will be up and running by April 2005! They will also be doing custom kill and processing for people who want to market their own beef and they are a federally inspected plant.
Now the really good part! $2500 buys you a 50 cow share and financing is available! Sure beats any other deal I've heard of?
What would happen if we had a half dozen or so of these plants throughout Alberta instead of one big mega cow plant? Serve the local market and put some electricity back on the grid? Seems to me this concept makes a lot more sense than a huge white elephant that will probably go down when that border opens? I would think the provincial government should be behind this type of deal and doing it's best to promote it?

[cswilson]

Boy I wrestle with that dilema big and efficient over smaller and more convenient-I look to the hog barn fiasco's we see now and then. What would be more stable 100 farms with 50 sows or 1 with 5000. In our area there used to be 1000's of hogs and you never knew they were there-the megabarn proposal fell through and now you can't find one to make deer sausage with. These smaller kill plants might not be the tops in efficiency but they might make a heck of alot of sense to the people and community they're built in. I know some of the community owned grain terminals and pelleting plants have been pretty successful in Sask.

[drill7]

You say finacing is available for that $2500 share. Is that 100% of the share cost, with just the share as colateral? If not, why not? Who takes the loss when the plant fails? All these plants are a good idea, but nobody is going to back them up with any money. It's still the producer that will be left out in the cold .

[ValueChainFX]

Right on cowman!