Cargill said the High River plant, seen here on April 20, 2020, will process about three million meals with products currently in the facility in order to prevent food waste.
Todd Korol/The Globe and Mail
One of Canada’s largest slaughterhouses is halting operations after hundreds of people connected to the facility were infected with the novel coronavirus and one died from COVID-19, marking the first major shutdown in the country’s food supply chain.
Cargill Ltd. on Monday said it is temporarily closing its meat-processing plant in High River, Alta. The facility churns out roughly 40 per cent of Western Canada’s processed beef and is a key part of the province’s agriculture industry. Alberta has linked 484 cases of COVID-19 to this plant and dozens more at a competing facility.
The president of the Canadian Federation of Agriculture said the closing of the facility is “devastating” for the country’s food system, which is already under strain amid the pandemic. “[The supply chain] normally runs tickety-boo and no one has to think about it,” Mary Robinson said. “These systems are so efficient and so well-run, and as soon as we start mucking around, we’re going to have problems.”
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The High River plant is one of several slaughterhouses in North America to close or slow its assembly lines because employees, who work elbow to elbow, have tested positive for the novel coronavirus. Also hit by the pandemic is JBS Canada, one of the largest beef companies in the country. So far, 67 people linked to JBS’s operations in Brooks, Alta., have contracted COVID-19, according to the province. JBS did not return a message seeking comment.
The idling of the High River facility, even temporarily, threatens to cause ripple effects along the food supply chain, both forward and backward. Consumers might see diminished stock and higher prices at the grocery store, and farmers face the prospect of financial hardship. If producers cannot find a processor to take their animals when they are ready for market, they will incur higher feed and labour costs. Some industry groups warn that a backlog of live animals on farms could also prompt producers to make hard decisions around culling some of their cattle.
Jon Nash, the head of Cargill’s North American protein division, said the company has begun the process of temporarily idling the High River facility. “We are working with farmers and ranchers, our customers and our employees to supply food in this time of crisis and keep markets moving,” he said in a statement.
Cargill, a global agriculture company with headquarters in Minnesota, said the High River plant will process about three million meals with products currently in the facility in order to prevent food waste. The firm did not provide details on how long the closure would last. The facility employs 2,000 people who typically process 4,500 head of cattle each day; many of the labourers are temporary foreign workers and immigrants tied to the city’s Filipino community.
Meat-processing companies have taken measures to create space between workers, including erecting individual stalls in cafeterias, but employees for the most part work in close quarters. The job site, then, is ripe for the novel coronavirus, which causes COVID-19, to spread. The union had been urging Cargill to suspend operations to protect its workers.
“It is about time,” said Thomas Hesse, president of United Food and Commercial Workers Local 401, noting there were 38 cases of COVID-19 linked to the plant on Easter Sunday.
The head of the Syndicat Agriculture Union, which represents federal food inspectors, said he sent two letters in the past week to federal cabinet ministers asking them to implement consistent protocols across all processing plants that have sick employees. Fabian Murphy said the union wants facilities to immediately shut down for 14 days after an employee tests positive for the virus. He is also advocating for inspectors and workers to be supplied with personal protective equipment. (Inspectors must be on site during slaughter activities.)
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“The [Canadian Food Inspection Agency] is leaving it up to the plants to make a determination of whether they can operate safely or not,” Mr. Murphy said. “I don’t think that’s the right call. … I think the government could have stepped in sooner and taken decisive action.” The CFIA did not immediately respond to a request for comment late Monday night.
Deena Hinshaw, Alberta’s Chief Medical Officer of Health, said carpooling and the coronavirus spreading in households where infected people are unable to isolate from others have played a notable role in the outbreak in High River. Many of the people tied to processing plants with COVID-19 were exposed to the virus before the facilities implemented safety measures, she said.
“We will continue to see new cases linked to this outbreak over the coming days,” Dr. Hinshaw said.
The Canadian Cattlemen’s Association, which represents 63,000 beef farms and feedlots, said Cargill was in touch on Monday to communicate that the plant would be shut down for a “short period of time.” Dennis Laycraft, the association’s executive vice-president, said that while he hopes the slaughterhouse will reopen soon, farmers need to prepare for the possibility that the plant could stay closed for weeks. And each week, he said, adds about 25,000 cattle to the backlog on Canadian farms.
“Every part of the industry is being impacted,” he said in a virtual town hall Monday. “We’re reaching out, literally as we speak, to the government to stress the urgency in getting moving on a number of measures we’ve been presenting over the last number of weeks.”
The association is urging Ottawa to implement what is known as a set-aside program, which would allow farmers to keep their livestock longer and feed the animals a forage-heavy maintenance diet instead of the higher-calorie growth diet that typically precedes slaughter. The program would be reminiscent of the one used during the BSE crisis of the early 2000s, when slaughterhouse capacity was down.
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Without a set-aside program to slow down the supply chain, producers could be looking at a half-billion dollars in market losses before the end of June, Mr. Laycraft said.
The diminished processing capacity may also become apparent to consumers when they visit their local grocery store. Ms. Robinson said that while there is meat in storage that can be drawn upon in the short term, those inventories will not hold indefinitely. “The storm is not tomorrow,” she said. “The impact of these decisions being made today are going to be felt in the medium and longer term.”
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TOKYO (AP) — Japanese technology group SoftBank swung back to profitability in the July-September quarter, boosted by positive results in its Vision Fund investments.
Tokyo-based SoftBank Group Corp. reported Tuesday a fiscal second quarter profit of nearly 1.18 trillion yen ($7.7 billion), compared with a 931 billion yen loss in the year-earlier period.
Quarterly sales edged up about 6% to nearly 1.77 trillion yen ($11.5 billion).
SoftBank credited income from royalties and licensing related to its holdings in Arm, a computer chip-designing company, whose business spans smartphones, data centers, networking equipment, automotive, consumer electronic devices, and AI applications.
The results were also helped by the absence of losses related to SoftBank’s investment in office-space sharing venture WeWork, which hit the previous fiscal year.
WeWork, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 2023, emerged from Chapter 11 in June.
SoftBank has benefitted in recent months from rising share prices in some investment, such as U.S.-based e-commerce company Coupang, Chinese mobility provider DiDi Global and Bytedance, the Chinese developer of TikTok.
SoftBank’s financial results tend to swing wildly, partly because of its sprawling investment portfolio that includes search engine Yahoo, Chinese retailer Alibaba, and artificial intelligence company Nvidia.
SoftBank makes investments in a variety of companies that it groups together in a series of Vision Funds.
The company’s founder, Masayoshi Son, is a pioneer in technology investment in Japan. SoftBank Group does not give earnings forecasts.
Shopify Inc. executives brushed off concerns that incoming U.S. President Donald Trump will be a major detriment to many of the company’s merchants.
“There’s nothing in what we’ve heard from Trump, nor would there have been anything from (Democratic candidate) Kamala (Harris), which we think impacts the overall state of new business formation and entrepreneurship,” Shopify’s chief financial officer Jeff Hoffmeister told analysts on a call Tuesday.
“We still feel really good about all the merchants out there, all the entrepreneurs that want to start new businesses and that’s obviously not going to change with the administration.”
Hoffmeister’s comments come a week after Trump, a Republican businessman, trounced Harris in an election that will soon return him to the Oval Office.
On the campaign trail, he threatened to impose tariffs of 60 per cent on imports from China and roughly 10 per cent to 20 per cent on goods from all other countries.
If the president-elect makes good on the promise, many worry the cost of operating will soar for companies, including customers of Shopify, which sells e-commerce software to small businesses but also brands as big as Kylie Cosmetics and Victoria’s Secret.
These merchants may feel they have no choice but to pass on the increases to customers, perhaps sparking more inflation.
If Trump’s tariffs do come to fruition, Shopify’s president Harley Finkelstein pointed out China is “not a huge area” for Shopify.
However, “we can’t anticipate what every presidential administration is going to do,” he cautioned.
He likened the uncertainty facing the business community to the COVID-19 pandemic where Shopify had to help companies migrate online.
“Our job is no matter what comes the way of our merchants, we provide them with tools and service and support for them to navigate it really well,” he said.
Finkelstein was questioned about the forthcoming U.S. leadership change on a call meant to delve into Shopify’s latest earnings, which sent shares soaring 27 per cent to $158.63 shortly after Tuesday’s market open.
The Ottawa-based company, which keeps its books in U.S. dollars, reported US$828 million in net income for its third quarter, up from US$718 million in the same quarter last year, as its revenue rose 26 per cent.
Revenue for the period ended Sept. 30 totalled US$2.16 billion, up from US$1.71 billion a year earlier.
Subscription solutions revenue reached US$610 million, up from US$486 million in the same quarter last year.
Merchant solutions revenue amounted to US$1.55 billion, up from US$1.23 billion.
Shopify’s net income excluding the impact of equity investments totalled US$344 million for the quarter, up from US$173 million in the same quarter last year.
Daniel Chan, a TD Cowen analyst, said the results show Shopify has a leadership position in the e-commerce world and “a continued ability to gain market share.”
In its outlook for its fourth quarter of 2024, the company said it expects revenue to grow at a mid-to-high-twenties percentage rate on a year-over-year basis.
“Q4 guidance suggests Shopify will finish the year strong, with better-than-expected revenue growth and operating margin,” Chan pointed out in a note to investors.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 12, 2024.
TORONTO – RioCan Real Estate Investment Trust says it has cut almost 10 per cent of its staff as it deals with a slowdown in the condo market and overall pushes for greater efficiency.
The company says the cuts, which amount to around 60 employees based on its last annual filing, will mean about $9 million in restructuring charges and should translate to about $8 million in annualized cash savings.
The job cuts come as RioCan and others scale back condo development plans as the market softens, but chief executive Jonathan Gitlin says the reductions were from a companywide efficiency effort.
RioCan says it doesn’t plan to start any new construction of mixed-use properties this year and well into 2025 as it adjusts to the shifting market demand.
The company reported a net income of $96.9 million in the third quarter, up from a loss of $73.5 million last year, as it saw a $159 million boost from a favourable change in the fair value of investment properties.
RioCan reported what it says is a record-breaking 97.8 per cent occupancy rate in the quarter including retail committed occupancy of 98.6 per cent.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 12, 2024.
