On Monday, Member of Parliament for Winnipeg South Terry Duguid, on behalf of Agriculture and Agri-Food Minister Marie-Claude Bibeau, announced a federal investment of up to $5.1 million for Buffalo Creek Mills to purchase and install first-in-Canada technology as part of its plant expansion in Altona, Manitoba.
"This new equipment will help create and maintain new markets for Canadian oat products while helping to grow the local economy. Buffalo Creek Mills has been part of the landscape of Southern Manitoba for many years, and continues to provide high quality, safe oat products for both Canadians and the world. With their strong connections to the local community, they are well placed to bring this exciting new technology to the production of oats and oat products to Southern Manitoba," said Duguid.
A customized continuous oat kiln with first-in-Canada functionality and associated processing and packaging equipment will allow Buffalo Creek Mills to further process oats for use as conventional food ingredients and for the creation of emerging oat products. Byproducts are repurposed for use in animal feed and biofuels as part of an initiative to participate in a zero waste circular economy.
"Buffalo Creek Mills is a young company in Altona, Manitoba that started base level processing of oats in 2015 with the aspiration of producing table ready oat products. The award of this AgriInnovate funding has enabled our company to start a capital expansion project that includes the installation of state-of-the-art equipment that will produce both conventional and emerging new oat products for human consumption. Upon completion of this project, Buffalo Creek Mills will have grown from three employees at its inception to a projected 45 employees and will have the capability of processing 54,000 MT/yr of healthy oats for global consumption," said Ryan Penner, Chief Executive Officer, Buffalo Creek Mills.
Buffalo Creek Mills currently produces non-stabilized oat groats (the hulled kernel of the oat grain) for sales to the North American market and processes it into a variety of commercial human-grade oat products as well as pet-grade products including oat groats, feed oats, groats chips, ground oat hulls, and hull pellets animal feed, pet food and biofuel industries.
The AgriInnovate program, under the Canadian Agricultural Partnership, provides repayable contributions for projects that aim to accelerate the commercialization, adoption and/or demonstration of innovative products, technologies, processes or services that increase agri-sector competitiveness and sustainability.
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