Farm-Scape, Episode 2107

An official with Hytek reports the response of local residents to a 200 million dollar OlyWest pork processing plant proposed for Winnipeg has been generally positive.

Last November Quebec based Olymel, Manitoba based Hytek Limited and Saskatchewan based Big Sky Farms announced plans to build a 300,000 square foot pork processing plant in the St. Boniface industrial park under a joint venture partnership.

To outline those plans and to gather feedback, OlyWest distributed 39,000 brochures to residents of Transcona and St. Boniface and 2,800 brochures to area businesses.

Hytek Vice President of Business Development Guy Baudry told Manitoba Pork Council's annual meeting yesterday public response has been generally supportive.

"We had approximately 70 percent of the respondents were positive and supportive of the plant with underlying concerns with respect to, primarily, traffic and understanding the number of trucks that are coming into the plant and the number of trucks that are going to be leaving.

Much of that traffic concern is alleviated because of the preferred truck route that we've identified coming into the plant which won't have trucks passing by area residences.

Of the respondent, 30 percent of the respondents were neutral to more negative but, again, their concerns being underlined in odor concerns. At this point in time we stress that these odor concerns are more of a perception. Once people understand the fact about the plant, the plant won't be creating any issues with respect to odor."

Baudry says the company hopes to be ready to submit its environmental licence application by August, which will kick off the formal environmental review and licensing process, and to have a construction permit by the end of the year.

For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.