YORKTON — Grain Millers Canada celebrates its 25th anniversary this year with 1,200 per cent growth over that time and strong retail presence across the country.
“If it’s a store brand product on a Canadian grocer’s shelf, by and large, it’s made here in Yorkton,” said president Terry Tyson.
The company started with a couple of grain bins and a mill about the fifth the size it eventually became after Grain Millers bought the site from Popowich Milling.
A second mill, packaging capability and warehousing followed, and there is still work underway to keep the facility current. It also has an organic line.
Most production focuses on flaking for rolled oats used in hot cereal and oatmeal. Grain Millers also sells whole oat groats, steel cut oats, oat flour and oat bran. Food companies use these ingredients to make beverages, cookies, granola bars, baking mixes and more, Tyson said.
The company buys nearly 24 million bushels of oats a year sourced mainly within 160 to 200 kilometres of Yorkton, Sask. The organic oats are grown all over the Prairies.
“That number is kind of mind-boggling,” Tyson said, considering it started at one million bu.
Oat prices are about $3.50 per bu. and lower than they have been due to surplus supply. Tyson said new crop prices are about the same.
“We do expect, or at least farmers have planned, a lower amount of oats, a reduction in oat acres year over year, which is actually what the market is signalling them to do,” he said.
“Where prices go is always going to be weather-driven.”
The oat-growing area has been wet this spring, and seeding was late, particularly in the Canora, Preeceville and Norquay areas. Some farmers may have planted oats to accommodate a shorter growing season.
Tyson said fertilizer prices can drive that, too, because oats don’t require as much fertility.
“I think if there’s any meaningful shift in acres back to oats, that would not be price friendly, but of course, later seeding always brings production risk, too,” he said.
In the meantime, Grain Millers is adding a consumer packaging line to open up the United States market. That market prefers canisters over the poly bags with zipper tops that consumers would see in Canada, so canister packaging is on the way.
Tyson said the oat beverage market has plateaued after driving huge growth in the industry, but it was a game changer.
“The whole industry, especially for the years from 2017 to 2022 or 2023, was really just trying to keep up to demand, honestly, and so we built capacity and others built capacity just to try to keep the customer supplied and happy,” he said.
The beverage market is now over-capacity and he said the game has changed again to looking at opportunities in Asia, India and Africa.
Canada supplies about 90 per cent of the oats milled in the United States, and about 85 per cent of Canadian oat products go there.
Tyson said the industry is a prime example of an integrated North American market, with assets on both sides of the border. He said companies continue to point this out in anticipation of the upcoming Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement renegotiation.
Grain Millers Canada also has a year-old flax plant in Delisle, southwest of Saskatoon, that handles brown, yellow and organic crop. Tyson said the flax business is growing, with more potential to use flax as an egg replacement in baking, for example.
One of the challenges, however, is to get more acres seeded.
“We have had to at times rely on imported supply to keep our flax operations rolling,” he said.
“That’s one of the mandates of our flax group is to drive acres in the ground.”
A facility in Rycroft, Alta., was built to mainly supply Eugene, Oregon, and was purpose-built to handle oat trains.
Northern Gold, in Port Coquitlam, B.C., which produces granola bars and other products at scale for retailers, is another Grain Millers asset.
About the author
Karen Briere grew up in Canora, Sask. where her family had a grain and cattle operation. She has a degree in journalism from the University of Regina and has spent more than 30 years covering agriculture from the Western Producer’s Regina bureau.
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