Mitchell's Gourmet Foods Concludes Major Expansion

Mitchell's Gourmet Foods Inc. (formerly Intercontinental Packers Ltd.) has opened a $14 million expansion and modernization of its Saskatoon plant, giving the company the capacity to slaughter and process two million hogs a year.

"This major expansion and equipment upgrade, announced in 1997 by my late husband, makes our plant one of the most technologically-advanced in Canada, and the largest in the country, in terms of full-time employees,'' Mitchell's Gourmet Foods Inc. chairperson, LuAn Mitchell, told a news conference.

The expansion and modernization includes:

• the world's first robotic arm to be used in a commercial pork processing plant. The robotic arm removes ribs from pork bellies at the rate of 750 per hour.
• 10,000 sqft state-of-the-art pork cut, boning, and fresh-chilled packaging operation, which gives the plant the ability to handle 1.1 million hogs per year on a one-shift basis. When hog supplies increase, plant capacity can be increased to two million hogs a year, with the simple introduction of a second shift.
• new smokehouses, cooling units and processing operations for the increased and more efficient production of bacon, wieners, smoked sausage and many other smoked meat products.

``Mitchell's Gourmet Foods dedicates significant resources to ongoing research and development, both to improve existing products and develop new product lines. New product lines are added to our production at an average rate of five per month. Currently, our plant processes, packages and distributes 51 products under the Mitchell's Gourmet Foods label, 290 products under the Olympic Fine Foods label, and 287 product lines under various private labels,'' said Stu Irvine, president and COO officer.