Pontiac’s only provincially licensed abattoir will live to see another day thanks to the efforts of a small group of local farmers and the MRC Pontiac.

On Wednesday the MRC announced its bid to purchase the assets of the slaughterhouse, placed in March, had been successful.

The Abattoir les Viandes du Pontiac, which first opened in 2018, listed its assets for sale after the business filed for bankruptcy protection in February of this year.

In March the Council of Mayors passed a resolution enabling the MRC to use funding it had received from the province to develop a local food transformation facility, under the name AgriSaveur, to instead support a bid to purchase the assets of the abattoir, which the MRC says still falls in line with the larger vision for the AgriSaveur project.

“The decision was made on the fourteenth, and the actual signing happened yesterday,” Shanna Armstrong, the MRC’s economic director for agriculture, told THE EQUITY on Friday morning.

Armstrong explained that while the original plan had been for the MRC to use some of its AgriSaveur money to help a group of producers in the region purchase the assets, it became clear in the process of placing a bid that to be able to be guaranteed all of the assets, one person or entity had to bid on everything.

In light of this, the MRC put up the money for the entirety of the bid, at a cost of $1,594,500, which came from components 3 and 4 of the Fonds régions et ruralité (FRR).

“The plan is that this group [of producers] that will eventually become a cooperative would then contribute their portion and buy some of the assets off the MRC,” Armstrong said. While she did not specify how much the producers would buy back, she noted that the MRC would still own the larger portion of the assets.

Armstrong emphasized that there is much work to be done by the MRC and the group of producers to determine how the abattoir will be run and who will be running it.

She said the MRC would most likely remain the owners of the building, but that it could be run by a not-for-profit group, as is the case with the Stone School Gallery building in Portage du Fort, or the facilities at Chutes Coulonge.

“All the details have to be ironed out, but the idea is that we would be working together,” Armstrong said.

THE EQUITY requested to speak with any of the eight farmers who have formed the initial group of producers, but was told they wished to remain anonymous at this time while they work on forming a cooperative.
AgriSaveur project finds its home

For some years now the MRC has been talking about developing a food processing centre that will offer local producers resources to transform raw goods they produce on-farm into additional products that can be sold directly to consumers.

The MRC had received funding for this initiative – $450,000 from FRR stream 4 provincial funding in 2023, to be used for a regional revitalization project, as well as $1,041,665 in FRR stream 3 funding to be used for a project that develops a regional strength, such as agriculture, for which a region is already known. The MRC also received $100,000 from the Entente sectorielle bioalimentaire de l’Outaouais.

Armstrong said the MRC had dedicated a large portion of this funding to either the purchase or retrofitting of a building so that it could host the many different activities associated with the AgriSaveur project.

When the abattoir’s assets were listed for sale the MRC realized the building could offer itself as a good starting point for the AgriSaveur facility.

“The building part is clearly looked after now,” Armstrong said, noting the benefits of already having meat processing facilities on site. She said the plan is to eventually add other equipment to offer other types of food transformation opportunities.

“The group of producers are also very keen on the whole food transformation hub idea, not just having it as an abattoir,” she said. “But now, step one is getting an abattoir up and running, and then the next steps will come.”

A tough business to run

“It’s not a secret it can be difficult to run abattoirs in the province,” Armstrong admitted, pointing to the high costs associated with ensuring cumbersome regulations are followed, labour challenges involved with finding people willing and able do the work of slaughtering animals, and the impossibility of competing with the prices offered by much larger, more efficient abattoirs, like Cargill, as the greatest obstacles in the business.

Alain Lauzon was one of four partners who opened Abattoir les Viandes du Pontiac in 2018. He is all too familiar with the challenges Armstrong described, but said the greatest for him was losing the team he went into business with.

“I ended up doing everything alone, which is impossible, to run a place like this alone,” Lauzon said. “I had too much on my plate.”

He said while his three partners remained official owners of the business, not long after opening he felt he was doing most of the work to keep the business running.

“I’m proud of what I did. I’m proud of myself, but in the meantime, I had three depressions in those years. But I was still there, and I was still the last soldier standing up.”

Lauzon said he believes the abattoir can succeed, “if the farmers get together and work as a team.”

“They’re going to face competition like everybody else but they’ve got to find a way to be innovative, so that they are different than any others around,” he elaborated.

Armstrong said those working on this project are consulting with experts in the industry with the hopes of overcoming some of these common challenges, but that the immediate work that needs to be done to get the abattoir back on its feet is applying for new permits, which she said could take months, and staffing the facility.

At the MRC Council of Mayors meeting last Wednesday, a group of people employed at the abattoir until it closed in March asked the MRC whether they would be getting their jobs back once the abattoir is up and running again.

Kim Lesage, director general for the MRC, addressed their concerns.

“It could take time because the abattoir purchase was for the building, the cold rooms, the equipment, the machinery, but not the business name. So we have to reapply for the MAPAQ and their certifications,” Lesage explained, encouraging the employees to leave their contact information so the MRC could be in touch when it came time to rehire.

Thats a huge benefit of this too, is keeping jobs in the Pontiac, so absolutely we’ll be in communications with them,” Armstrong said. “We’re going to have to look at our needs down the road.”

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