HyLife has announced plans to build a brand new, head office in Steinbach.
President and Chief Executive Officer Grant Lazaruk says they are hoping to break ground during the third week in May. The four story office building will have more than 50,000 square feet of space and go up inside Steinbach's Millbrook Market. This is the new development that is taking shape behind the RCMP detachment.
"The whole concept of Millbrook Market area is a great concept, it's a great fit for us," says Lazaruk.
HyLife currently has its head office in La Broquerie. The company has more than 3,500 employees in multiple countries, with over 2,500 working in Manitoba. More than 1,500 of those are employed through HyLife's Foods division in Neepawa. The remaining 1,000 work throughout rural Manitoba in the company's Farms division.
Lazaruk says their HyLife office staff currently work out of a number of locations. He says about 188 of them will move into the new office, once complete. Lazaruk says the new head office will be large enough to host 220 employees, including HyLife's executive management team and many of its directors. HyLife will continue to use their existing head office facility in La Broquerie, though it will be repurposed.
Though their roots are in La Broquerie, Lazaruk says moving their head office to Steinbach just makes sense.
"Originally, there was a lot of employees just from La Broquerie but those employees have expanded into Steinbach, into Winnipeg and to the surrounding area," he explains. "So Steinbach is a sort of neutral location for our employees to travel to. And I think it just makes sense to invest in a building like this in Steinbach."
According to the President and CEO, discussions to build a new head office have probably been in the works the last two or three years. He notes it took a while to get to this point, because they looked at a number of different options. One of those options was the old Safeway building located on the north end of Steinbach. Lazaruk says it is not like that was a bad option.
"I don't know if there's any reasons why not," he says. "I would just think the Millbrook Market area was just a better fit for us. And it fit what we wanted to accomplish with our employees."
The new building will include a feature kitchen with an outdoor pizza oven, smoker and barbeque.
"We're a food company, so what we want to do is cater to our customers and we cater to our employees," explains Lazaruk. "So we're going to have a special space within the building that allows us to cater to customers, and allow our employees to use. It's not a restaurant."
HyLife is teaming up with Cibinel Architecture and Three Way Builders on the project. Completion is anticipated in September of 2022.
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