2021 MEAT POULTRY GROWTH STRATEGY

Funded Project –Meat & Poultry Growth Strategy

In 2019 MPO introduced the Meat & Poultry Growth Strategy which identified barriers plants faced in growing their businesses. Labour, infrastructure, funding, leadership development and innovation were identified as priorities to address. This study looked to validate our initial theories and to paint the picture on the opportunities that existed so that we could develop some targets for the strategy.

This project is funded through the Canadian Agricultural Partnership (the Partnership), a five-year federal-provincial-territorial initiative. MPO was successful in obtaining funding to develop a strategy to increase capacity for Ontario’s meat sector.

To support its strategy, MPO undertook a research project identifying the potential for capacity growth in the Sector. More specifically the project looked to:

• Understand the current meat and poultry processing capacity in Ontario.

• Identify the estimated level of potential for capacity growth by Ontario meat and poultry processors, and the supports that would be most beneficial to processors to achieve such growth.

• Determine the current and future demand from Ontario farmers for meat and poultry packing services/capacity.

• Determine elements for a “hooks and heads” centralized reservation system for meat processing.

We learned that:

• Between 2010 and 2020, meat slaughtering at provincial inspected plants increased by 27%. At the same time, the number of licensed provincial abattoirs has declined by 23% over the same period.

• Many respondents to the Farmers survey (80%) indicated barriers to growing their livestock production. Most of the survey respondents (80%) suggested that the “availability of processing/slaughtering capacity” is a factor limiting growth in their livestock production.

• Growth capacity by commodity ranged from 22% for poultry, 50% for pork, 139% for beef, 152% for veal and 296% for sheep and goat.

• Approximately 61% of respondents indicated they could grow their sales revenues by over $1 million, while one-third (33%) expected they could increase revenues by over $5 million, if they receive all the additional supports they need.

• With a $40-50 million investment meat plants could increase revenues by $262-$324 million. That represents a 7:1 ROI

This project helped further define our targets for the Meat & Poultry Growth Strategy. And resulted in the following

• Help provide data to inform government on gaps and opportunities within the sector to provide timely updates on future funding programs.

• Identified there is more demand than capacity both on input side (farms) and output (consumer) side

• Helped us identify next steps of developing the strategy which include:

Focusing on Workforce Development (foreign and domestic strategies)

Developing the Meat-Tech Centre of Excellence –training future workforce and entrepreneurs, and helping technology companies create solutions for meat plants

Exploring new ways to get funding into the sector including funding programs, accessible loan programs, and attracting angel and private equity investors.