Bow Island Spitz processing plant to close

By Mo Cranker on February 16, 2018.

COLLIN GALLANT
cgallant@medicinehatnews.com
Twitter: CollinGallant

The sun will set on Spitz — the Southern Alberta success story that grew into a nationally known sunflower seed snack and, as a small town business, was bought out by global snackfood giant ten years ago.

On Thursday, owner PepsiCo informed more than 50 employees at the Bow Island processing plant that it would be closed later this year with production relocated to a facility in the United States.

“This was a business decision based on an extensive evaluation of the long-term viability of this site and its ability to meet our increasing volume requirements for the brand,” read a statement from Frito-Lay spokesman on Friday.

“(Spitz) will continue to play an important role in our North American portfolio. We are committed to assisting our impacted associates with financial support, access to financial counselling and job placement services.”

The News has learned 53 employees will be laid off when the doors are closed sometime this summer.

Two years ago, PepsiCo ended the lease on its distribution centre in Southwest Medicine Hat and amalgamated those operations into its Bow Island location.

Spitz was begun in 1982 by couple Tom and Emmy Droog, and by 2008, after the “Spitz” brand went national, Pepsico sought out the Droogs to make acquire the line of flavoured seeds.

Ten years later, local business and political interests said the closure would be felt throughout the county.

“For Grassy Lake, Burdett, Bow Island and the county, that’s a lot of jobs and families effected,” said County of Forty Mile Reeve Steve Wikkirink .

“But for now that’s a pretty big blow for our area.”

MLA Drew Barnes said the announcement was “devastating” and squarely blamed the current New Democratic government for increasing costs when the United States federal government is reducing taxes.

“More and more Alberta businesses are going to be voting with their feet and moving,” he said.

It is not immediately known how the closure would affect local growers, but it seems as though sunflowers have fallen off as a cash crop of choice in the region.

Sources say that most of the recent production from the plant was done will crop trucked in from Manitoba, where 90 per cent of Canada’s sunflower crop is grown.

According to the St. Mary’s Irrigation District’s 2016 Annual report, only 820 acres in the district was set aside for sunflower planting.

Across Canada, sunflower acres fell to 50,000 acres in 2017, half the amount from just two years earlier.

The United States Department of Agriculture states that in 2017, South Dakota produced the largest sunflower crop with more than 600,000 acres planted in 2017. North Dakota follows with 420,000 acres, and those two states account for more than three-quarters of U.S. acreage.

— With files from Jeremy Appel and Jamie Reiger of Southern Alberta Newspapers. 

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