Pasta plant?

[blackpowder]

John. Is there a factual inclusive unbiased book written or being planned by anyone? Perhaps no one would read it but a study on the how and why these decisions were made over the years.
I wonder how many people know what went on after the war for the sake of 'equality'.

[jdepape]

Bucket:

Thank you?
I guess?

[jdepape]

blackpowder:

I don't know of any book that would cover this stuff. I know some old traders that have talked about it. (I've even talked about it - have a bunch written - but life and work gets in the way.)

And there's loads of stories.

I know a trader who sold three cargoes of feed wheat to South Korea in a year when we had piles and piles of low quality wheat. The CWB caught wind of the sale. Whenever the trader approached the CWB for pricing, the CWB held its price high, even as world values were plummeting. This went of for a few weeks and finally, when the trader had to cover the sale, he bought from Australia at the then current values which had dropped like a stone since he made the sale. The CWB failed - they didn't realize that the trader had sold on the basis of "optional origin".

A bad combination of arrogance and ignorance.

A missed opportunity - three more cargoes of feed wheat for the CWB to sell elsewhere at stupidly lower prices.

[Jdhot]

Whoa chill out fellas. I thought that whole monopoly thing was history, but appears not.
On the durum market TODAY. One has to think that pasta processed locally is unlikely. Therefore you have US mill markets and offshore. If we end up with a issue like we did a year ago, railroad will refuse to pull into U.S. And then down to only offshore market. Or the local terminal market due to transport logistics. Something to factor in.

[chuckChuck]

The Prairie Pasta initiative was not viable with or without the CWB. There is/was overcapacity in pasta production in North America and lots of cheap imports make building new capacity uneconomic. Unless the market changes for pasta there won't be a plant built in Western Canada.

[MBgrower]

I could never understand how you can process pasta in sask and export it expecting to be profitable. What is the density of one container of pasta vs one container of clean durum seed? How well does it hold quality during transit? Is it like my ceral box, full of crumbs at the bottom? Cereal could be produced in western canada, but it isnt, probably because there isnt a large enough local market to justify a proccessor? Is it economies of scale, ie if we built a massive mill in sask to produce pasta and cereals, could we be profitable and compete with offshore mills?

[Braveheart]

MBGrower, Dakota Growers has been producing pasta in the middle of North Dakota for a few decades. Transportation logistics aren't as big an issue as getting quality durum is. Fusarium changed the game.

[jdepape]

Chuckchuck -

Prairie Pasta was advised to buy existing capacity, not add to it. At the time, there were plants for sale that would have been a good fit. The CWB issues were still there though.

Concerning your "cheap imports" comment - I think it's ironic that you would use this as a reason why it doesn't make sense to build here - considering that a lot of those imports are made with Canadian durum.