Canada Meat Group comes to North Bay

Canada Meat Group has officially started construction on a new processing facility at the Airport Industrial Business Park.

With today’s groundbreaking, the Ukrainian based company is expanding their international footprint to Canada.

They will operate a meat processing plant and cold storage facility locally and plan to increase availability and sales of high-quality meat, Kosher and Halal meat products in Ontario, across Canada and globally, with exports to the Middle East and Asia.

Jamey Heaton, the president of Bavarian Premium Meats which is the sales agent for Canada Meat Group says the decision to open a plant as opposed to other northern centres was based on the government support they received.

“There’s a great support form local government through the Northern Ontario Heritage Fund, through the NECO Foundation, through the city of North Bay. They support new businesses and help in training,” he says.

The local plant is expected to grow to employ about 40 people.

And George Burton of Invest North Bay says there are plans to expand their footprint.

Burton says they’ve been working on bringing Canada Meat Group to the city for a while and their hard work has finally paid off.

“It would have been easy to say let’s forget about it. It has been a lengthy 2 year process. We’ve been persistent, determined and dogged in bringing jobs to North Bay. There’s no magic formula. It’s just been a lot of hard work,” he says.

He says Canada Meat Group is committed to North Bay.