Ayr- The 175 workers at the Maple Leaf poultry-processing
plant here will be out of work when the plant closes May 18.
The 42,000-square-foot plant, built by J.M. Schneider Inc.
in 1969, is deemed to be the wrong size and shape.
Maple Leaf will hire 75 more workers for its plant in
Mississauga and will also move some work to its plant in Brantford which has
been at less than capacity.
Schneider built the plant to further-process chickens it was
then slaughtering at its main plant on Courtland Avenue in Kitchener. That plant,
which employs 1,200, is scheduled to close in 2014 because Maple Leaf is
consolidating meat processing at a new plant it is building in Hamilton.
Maple Leaf’s poultry operations have been ripe for
reorganization for years because it’s an electic collection of medium-sized
slaughtering and processing facilities scattered around Southwestern Ontario.
There is nothing in Canada to match the size and
efficiencies of the large U.S. chicken-slaughtering and poultry-processing
plants. The Canadian operations survive behind a high tariff wall that keeps
the U.S. companies from directly competing for supermarket accounts.
The workers at the plant in Ayr were stunned by the news
which was delivered to them in a church across the street from the processing plant.
Maple Leaf said it will meet with municipal officials –
North Dumfries Township Council and the Region of Waterloo – to discuss the
sale of the plant to some “non-competing” owner.
That rules out Grand River Foods of Cambridge, which has
been in rapid expansion mode in the further processing of chicken, and Elmira
Poultry, a veteran further-processing plant in Waterloo.
