By Ben Tompkins

New feed mill and canola crushing plant opens in Melfort

Oct 19, 2023 | 11:46 AM

The City of Melfort now has a feed mill in town once again, courtesy of an international company based out of China.

H&H Commercial Trade LTD. and its parent company AmCan group have opened a feed mill and canola crushing plant within the northeast community.

The new plant officially celebrated its grand opening on Wednesday (Oct. 18) alongside Melfort Mayor Glenn George.

The company and its plant will take canola from local farmers and extract the oil from the seeds while using the rest for animal feed.

They will then sell the oil back locally, or in most cases, export the oil out of the country to places like China or the United States, so it can be purified again and put back into local markets.

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This specific plant marks the company’s first in Saskatchewan, however, they’re hoping to build around 30 throughout the province.

One of the reasons the company chose Melfort as its first location was because of the pre-existing facility and its similar workings.

(Ben Tompkins/northeastNOW)

The joined facilities, which are just northwest of the local hospital, were shut down, however, some of the internal infrastructure was already in place.

“It’s good to have an existing building, it makes it a little easier and better than building from scratch,” AmCan CEO, Kristine Tyler told northeastNOW. “This spot, it already gave a lot of that foundation.”

According to Tyler, they’ve also already received a lot of support from the local community.

The company is also expecting to produce over 30,000 tonnes of product per year, through just one single plant.

“This is the start and this is where we can see it will bring us more,” added Tyler. “What we want to do is to develop more and now we’re in the agricultural development zone, we have roughly 150 acres of land where we’re going to build more of this type of facility. With Melfort, this will be the great start that we start from.”

Tyler and the rest of the business are excited about the ‘add-on opportunities’ they anticipate their company will provide, as now more than just the canola seed will be able to be utilized.

They also understand the resources that the entire province has and the effects that the Saskatchewan agriculture industry has on the rest of the world.

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