Gay Lea announced closure plan after assessment deemed cost of upgrades as high as $10 million.
It’s déjà vu for dairy farmers in the Temiskaming region of Ontario.
There’s another mission to save the Thornloe Cheese Factory from closure.
Parent company Gay Lea posted a notice this week that it would close the plant.
A similar shock ran through the community when Parmalat threatened to close Thornloe Cheese in 2006.
At that point, agricultural co-operative Gencor stepped in and the facility went on to produce award-winning cheeses.
Gay Lea purchased the plant in 2019.
Robin Flewwelling owns a small dairy farm in Earlton, Ont. and is organizing a committee to approach Gay Lea to save the plant from closure.
Flewwelling sends milk from his 40 grass-fed cows to the Thornloe plant for the cream to be separated and sent to Alliston to be made into butter.
He’s worried that if his milk is no longer processed locally, it will have to be shipped as conventional milk in larger quantities, which is more expensive and he’ll be paid less.
Local farmers worried
He says other small-scale farmers in the region share his concerns.
While he said the committee doesn’t yet have a plan, it has heard the concerns from Gay Lea about the cost of keeping the factory open.
Gay Lea’s vice-president of corporate and co-operative affairs, Mike Langdon, told CBC News the company’s hope when it bought the plant was to invest more in sales and marketing, so it could eventually make the financial case to upgrade aging equipment.
But those plans didn’t pan out.
Langdon said an assessment came back that the cost to do so is about $10 million and it could potentially be more.
Flewwelling said the committee will have to go in itself and take a look to make its own assessment.
“I’m sure it’s going to take some work now to get it back up again and going,” he said.
“But we haven’t seen the plant ourselves to know how much it needs or what they’re basing their estimates on. Top of the line brand-new equipment? Or is there the possibility of getting something that is, perhaps, used equipment that would still do the trick and have a quality product?”
Flewwelling said they haven’t spoken to anyone at Gay Lea yet, but they’ll have to move quickly because the longer they wait, the harder it will be to save the plant and its products.
“Hopefully we can get it going,” he said “We’re worried that they’re going to be losing if the Thornloe brand isn’t out there in the stores, they’ll lose shelf space and they’ll lose buyers for the product.”
Flewwelling said he’s disappointed that Gay Lea decided to pull out without consulting the community but they’ll rally in an effort to keep the factory going.
