Coped with PED, producer now stung by processor for over $600,000

Friday, April 11, 2014

by BETTER FARMING STAFF

Burgessville-based Bloxslea Farms Inc, is near the top, both alphabetically and numerically, of the list of creditors of Quality Meat Packers, which filed a Notice of Intention to Make a Proposal for two companies pursuant to Section 50 of the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act a week ago. Quality Meat Packers Limited listed debts of $40.5 million. Toronto Abattoirs limited shows $28.9 million owing.

Owed $601,413 for market pigs, as well as a bit over $5,000 for trucking, Bloxslea Farms Inc. is the largest single farm creditor.  Bloxslea markets hogs raised from about 2,000 sows and also buys 7,000 weaner pigs a month to raise in contract finishing barns.

 “I was suspicious,” owner Jim Bloxsidge recalls, on Thursday evening, when regular direct deposits weren’t made to the farm’s bank account on March 31 and April 1, for pigs shipped in the last half of the previous week. “I was told it was some kind of a problem with the automatic transfer. There was a glitch somewhere in the program . . . . They did have a glitch before a month or two ago and a few days later everything was fine.”

Not this time.

So Bloxsidge continued to ship hogs and remains unpaid for deliveries on March 26 and 27, as well as March 31 to  April 3. (The Quality plant in Toronto has been idle on Fridays for some time because of a shortage of hogs.)

 “We have been told that we would receive (monies for the earlier shipped hogs) but I haven’t seen anything.”  Bloxsidge says he is not alone among producers who weren’t paid for hogs shipped March 26 and 27.

Quality notified Bloxsidge last Thursday afternoon about a meeting on Friday of “larger” producers “in a private place” in Tavistock where a complex story was outlined.

 “I can’t explain what they explained,” said Bloxsidge.  “The funds were not there.  They were not going to pay and they wanted to reorganize. We’ve been waiting to see what goes on.

 “In the meantime, we have to find a place for our pigs. We already ship loads to Quebec  . . . We have a good record with Quebec and they were glad to accept more loads.”

What happens now? “I don’t really have a clue.”

Bloxsidge says: “Even though they owe me money I am out in the dark.  I wonder if I should get a lawyer to see if I can get some of my money back.” He says that his farm has just been through a porcine epidemic diarrhea outbreak; it was one of the first farms in Ontario, in spite of precautions.

 “We had our own truck wash bay and everything and we were trying to make sure that we didn’t get it and we ended up feeding it to the pigs through the baby pig feed.

“I’m glad the pig prices are up there because it is going to take that to keep above water.”  Before that, sow production had just got back to “normal numbers” for production after a PRRS (porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome) outbreak.

Bloxsidge says his farm has had a long relationship with Quality Meat Packers. “They’ve been good to me, taking hogs and extra hogs and good deals but, ouch, it still hurts when you don’t get paid for a couple of thousand hogs.”

Bloxsidge ships some hogs to Conestoga Packers, a co-op in Breslau, as well as to a Quebec processor. He says the co-op at Breslau could ramp up production. He doesn’t know about the status of Sofina in Hamilton, Ontario’s pork processor. BF

Further coverage of the situation at Quality Meats will follow.