The auction of the Levinoff-Colbex beef-packing plant in
Montreal went “very well,” according to auction manager Comisso LaRosa of
Crescento Commercial Corp.
The plant was sold in pieces. None of the bidders was
interested in buying it as an ongoing operation.
LaRosa said the equipment sold to buyers from across North
America.
Levinoff-Colbex was bought by Quebec farmers, most of them
dairy farmers, after the Canadian export market was shut off by the discovery
of Bovine Spongiform Ecephalopathy (BSE, or mad cow’s disease) in a cull cow that
had died in Alberta in May, 2003.
Most cull cows were bought by packing plants in the United
States, so prices plunged to near nothing after the trading bans imposed by all
countries.
Quebec farmers put heavy pressure on the Levinoff plant
owners to sell to them and, with backing from the provincial and federal
governments, they took over.
The venture never turned a profit.
The story was similar in Ontario where dairy farmers who
controlled Gencor, an artificial insemination business, bought the former MGI
beef-packing plant in Kitchener.
It also lost money and ended in bankruptcy, as did Levinoff.
Gencor managers called the investment a success because the prices it paid for cull cows was considerably higher than before the plant opened.
In Manitoba, a farmer-backed venture never got off the
ground.
When the U.S. lifted its ban on Canadian cattle, buyers
returned to Ontario and Quebec auctions and the farmer-owned plants could not
match their competition.
LaRosa would not divulge total proceeds from the auction.
