Hog Administrative Services or H@MS is a joint venture hog marketing service that brings together the SPI Marketing Group and the Manitoba Pork Marketing Cooperative.

Effective on 1 January, it began providing a full range of hog marketing services that had been available in Manitoba to producers in Manitoba and Saskatchewan.

SPI chair and H@MS director Don Kolla says, in response to the reduction in the number of hog producers, discussions aimed at eliminating the duplication of efforts while improving services began about two years.

Don Kolla – SPI Marketing Group:

The main service is the marketing of the hogs.

Manitoba Pork had developed a forward pricing contract which will be a service as well as sourcing of feed grains as well as buying of protein products which they had in the past.

They also had a transit hog insurance programme.

Those are basically the key services.

In Saskatchewan, as producers, we weren't able to have those services and part of the reason there was just simply because of the number of producers that we had and the number of hogs that we did and it didn't warrant us to try and develop those services so we saw this as a real opportunity for a win in Saskatchewan to get involved in some of these services that Manitoba Pork was offering.

Mr Kolla notes the SPI marketing group and the Manitoba Pork Marketing Co-op are both represented on the H@MS board of directors and it will be up to the two parent organizations to determine how long they want to keep the joint venture in place.