Slaughter plant looks for investors

An offer is being prepared to raise money for a federally inspected slaughter plant for small and specialised livestock in Canada. Five Star Specialty Meats Limited is the company behind the push to build a $4-$5 million plant near Saskatoon to slaughter lambs, goats, emus, ostriches and rabbits. Tom Porter, the Saskatoon-based consultant spear-heading the project, said there have been several advances since the proposal became public last autumn. Work has been done on a new generation coop called Living Sky Products which is to coordinate the supply of lambs to the slaughter plant. Living Sky has an arrangement with a Toronto-based distributor that supplies restaurants in western Canada. The slaughter plant will function strictly on a contract basis. 'It will not buy or sell animals and it will do no marketing', Porter said. The slaughter plant is just a service.' Coordination of supply to the plant and marketing of the resulting meat will be done by the producer groups backing the project. Five Star Specialty Meats opted to go with an offering memorandum instead of a fully fledged prospectus to speed up the process. The offer will only be open to producers and not the public. Porter said the plant design should be complete by the end of July. He expects the offering memorandum will be completed this month and he hopes construction can begin in the autumn. Source: The Western Producer - Saskatoon