Roquette Garners Provincial Award

Dec 21, 2020

Roquette has been selected as one of Manitoba's top employers for 2020.

The plant-based protein manufacturer has been in Manitoba since 2017 -- when officials first broke ground on the project just outside of Portage la Prairie.

Communications and public affairs manager Michelle Finley says it's not the first time the company has been up for this award.

"We won our first one last year, and so we're excited that we won a second one this year. We've added so much new stuff as we're ramping up the plants, and it's a real sense of accomplishment for the entire team here."

She notes COVID-19 has put a damper on the way they welcome and orientate new workers. A lot of practices have shifted to online to minimize person-to-person contact. Finley says it's not the size of the company that puts them up for this award, it's the culture.

"Roquette is geared towards caring for its employees. People are at the center of everything Roquette does, and that includes its employees. So, they start there, and all of their policies support employees and make it an incredibly welcoming and rewarding place to work."

The plant has nearly 100 personnel on staff and Roquette is on the hunt for 20 more come for the start of the new year. Finley gives us an update on the status of the plant.

"Operations have started. We welcomed our first load of peas last week, and so, operations have started, and the team is ramping up. Everyone is extremely excited, and we're just full steam ahead heading into 2021."

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Video: US Soy: Pig growth is impaired by soybean meal displacement in the diet

Eric van Heugten, PhD, professor and swine extension specialist at North Carolina State University, recently spoke at the Iowa Swine Day Pre-Conference Symposium, titled Soybean Meal 360°: Expanding our horizons through discoveries and field-proven feeding strategies for improving pork production. The event was sponsored by Iowa State University and U.S. Soy.

Soybean meal offers pig producers a high-value proposition. It’s a high-quality protein source, providing essential and non-essential amino acids to the pig that are highly digestible and palatable. Studies now show that soybean meal provides higher net energy than current National Research Council (NRC) requirements. Plus, soybean meal offers health benefits such as isoflavones and antioxidants as well as benefits with respiratory diseases such as porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome (PRRS).

One of several ingredients that compete with the inclusion of soybean meal in pig diets is dried distillers grains with solubles (DDGS).

“With DDGS, we typically see more variable responses because of the quality differences depending on which plant it comes from,” said Dr. van Heugten. “At very high levels, we often see a reduction in performance especially with feed intake which can have negative consequences on pig performance, especially in the summer months when feed intake is already low and gaining weight is at a premium to get them to market.”

Over the last few decades, the industry has also seen the increased inclusion of crystalline amino acids in pig diets.

“We started with lysine at about 3 lbs. per ton in the diet, and then we added methionine and threonine to go to 6 to 8 lbs. per ton,” he said. “Now we have tryptophan, isoleucine and valine and can go to 12 to 15 lbs. per ton. All of these, when price competitive, are formulated into the diet and are displacing soybean meal which also removes the potential health benefits that soybean meal provides.”