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Published Aug 18, 2024 • Last updated 28 minutes ago • 4 minute read
The Canada Royal Milk facility in Kingston, Ont. on Friday, August. 16, 2024. Elliot Ferguson/The Whig-Standard/Postmedia Network Photo by Elliot Ferguson /The Whig-StandardArticle content
KINGSTON — After years of anticipation the Canada Royal Milk plant in the city’s west end is to start production next month.
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Eight years after it was announced, and five months after getting federal approval to sell its products, the plant is to hold a grand opening ceremony near the end of September.
“It’s quite a long journey,” Chenggang Han, the facility’s general manager, said in an interview with The Whig-Standard earlier this week.
It was 2016 when four executives with Feihe International Inc. came to Kingston with a proposal.
“Four guys came over, the oldest one was 42, the youngest one was 30 or 29,” Han recounted. “They came and said, ‘Ok, we want to invest $300 million to build a factory.’
“No one believed it.”
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A worker walks past the control room for the receiving area where raw milk is first brought into the Canada Royal Milk facility in Kingston, Ont. Photo by Elliot Ferguson /The Whig-Standard
Eventually, with the help of the city’s economic development agency the newcomers were able to convince the local community, including construction contractors, that the project was legit and construction began in 2017.
Inside the white, 300,000-square-foot building, miles of stainless steel pipe form the path that raw milk takes to become infant formula powder.
There’s nothing truly revolutionary about the equipment in the facility. It’s a mix of off-the-shelf technology from Europe, China and the United States.
Running through the middle of the building is the visitor’s corridor, a second-storey hallway sealed off from the production line but with floor to ceiling windows that offer a view of the action below.
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The process where the cans are filled with infant formula powder is also has the strongest hygiene controls at the Canada Royal Milk facility in Kingston, Ont. Photo by Elliot Ferguson /The Whig-Standard
The plant takes in raw milk from dairy farms in Ontario and Quebec and puts it through a process that steadily removes the moisture to create a powdered product.
Along the way the milk is pasteurized a few times and heated several times to kill off any contaminants.
The plant currently employs about 150 people but when production is up and running Han said they expect to have about 220 workers.
The plant is currently undergoing its annual deep clean and sterilization ahead of the start of production next month, so only a handful of workers could be seen walking among the machinery, but the plant is designed to minimize the amount of time workers interact with equipment as a way of reducing the potential for contaminants getting into the system.
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One of the final stages of the production process, where cans are inspected and sterilized before being filled with infant formula powder at the Canada Royal Milk facility in Kingston, Ont. Photo by Elliot Ferguson /The Whig-Standard
Most of the process is monitored and controlled from small rooms filled with monitoring equipment.
What sets the Kingston facility apart is that it was built, from the ground up, to produce powdered infant formula.
“A lot of other North American facilities are retrofitted from something else that they were built for,” explained process engineer Justin Yanosik. “This is built for infant formula and processing. So everything’s kind of state of the art and the best technology that they could get.”
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A worker walks on some of the equipment inside the Canada Royal Milk facility in Kingston, Ont. Photo by Elliot Ferguson /The Whig-Standard
While it likely will never need to, the Kingston facility could, under ideal conditions, produce enough infant formula to meet Canadian demand nine times over and it could fill 60 percent of the North American demand.
Even while the facility was being built the factory’s potential was significant enough to be addressed during renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 2017.
Infant formula export quota provisions in the new U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) were written with the Kingston facility in mind, Canada’s ambassador to the U.S. at the time said.
When it was announced, the initial plan was to eventually use goat milk as the main ingredient, a plan that provoked interest across the region.
The plant will still produce an adult product using goat milk but the bulk of its production is to made from cow milk.
Feihe International’s Canada Royal Milk plant under construction in 2018. Photo by Elliot Ferguson /The Whig-Standard
Han admitted the start of production was later than planned, but the process has been slowed by the COVID-19 pandemic, delays in construction and with suppliers.
The latest problem was a mix up with the cans the company uses to package the powder.
Plus, there hasn’t been an infant formula producer in Canada for more than 30 years so any government regulator who had any experience with the sector has retired.
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Striking sheet metal workers picket the Canada Royal Milk site in 2019 over hiring practices. Photo by Elliot Ferguson /The Whig-Standard
While he delays slowed the company down they only fed the rumour mill.
There was a conspiracy theories going around that the factory was actually a Chinese military facility with a deep underground bunker.
“The neighbours can hear the company blasting the rock,” he said. “They thought it might be 100 feet deep under the ground.”
In reality, Han said, once the topsoil was removed the construction team ran into solid limestone.
It cost $20 million to blast just two metres deep.
“Then we realized why this area is called Limestone District,” Han said.
In 2022 and 2023, there was also an infant formula shortage across North America after a four-month closure of a plant in Michigan.
Having a newly constructed factory designed to produce exactly that product prompted some people to suspect that the plant was already producing formula and secretly shipping it abroad.
It wasn’t.
It only received federal government approval to sell its products in Canada in March and since then it has only produced two batches. One batch was donated to the United Way of Kingston, Frontenac, Lennox and Addington and the other batch was earmarked for online sales.
Still, Han said the company is still enthusiastic about its decision to set up shop in Kingston.
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To counter the rumours, Han said the company has stepped up its profile in the community.
Han and others have tapped into Queen’s University, Kingston Economic Development and Trillium Dist. Coun. Jimmy Hassan’s Canadian Colours Kingston Foundation to help better integrate into the community.
“I call them my family,” Han said. “It’s quite a friendly city.”
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The warehouse at Canada Royal Milk facility in Kingston, Ont. Photo by Elliot Ferguson /The Whig-Standard
@elliotatthewhig
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Publish date : 2024-08-18 02:34:00
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