SCMCo-op General Meeting Announcement

Following up on our last post, we have now scheduled a General Meeting for the South Cariboo Meat Co-op. We will meet at 7:00 pm in the Creekside Seniors Centre (just north of the hospital) in 100 Mile House on September 9, 2010.

The purpose of this meeting is to present details on our previously announced consideration of a two-phase development of our provincially licensed red-meat abattoir to serve the South Cariboo region. In addition, we are looking for input on the pros and cons of this development approach and welcome any and all questions from both our existing membership and all interested parties.

For any additional information on this meeting, or any aspect of our SCMCo-op, please contact Howie McMillan at either info@southcariboomeat.coop or 250-395-6775.

The Board of Directors
South Cariboo Meat Co-op

An update from the SCMCo-op

Since our last general meeting, we have been working to source construction/start-up funding for our abattoir. In addition, we continue to work on obtaining quotes to firm up the estimated costs of our project.

Our discussions with potential funders – primarily the Business Development Bank and Farm Credit Canada – have been fairly productive and we now have a better understanding of the required steps to finance our abattoir. Although a number of issues related to our application have been identified, only one of them poses a significant challenge to our obtaining the funding to proceed. Each potential funder has identified a requirement for a significantly higher level of up-front equity, to come either from additional non-repayable grants or membership fees.

With the firmer cost estimates for all components of our project now exceeding $1,600,000, we are therefore faced with an up-front equity threshold over $600,000. Given this expanded price tag, we are also looking at start-up debt levels of roughly $800,000. Needless to say, these numbers have generated some ‘angst’ amongst our Board members!

In response to this greater challenge, our Board has met a number of times recently to discuss how best to proceed. One of the suggestions we are examining closely is a two-phase development of our abattoir over a number of years. Under this plan, we would construct the slaughtering component of our project now and add the processing capacity at a suitable later date. We would obtain a Class B (slaughtering only) Provincial license, once our first phase was completed. When we proceeded with the second phase, we would convert this license to a Class A.

While no decision has been made on this alternate approach, at this time we are seriously examining the apparent advantages. Of course, the primary advantage would be a significantly lower capital cost and a corresponding reduction in the amount of up-front capital we would have to raise to begin construction. Another significant advantage of this approach is that it would still allow us to achieve our principal objective to have a provincially licensed abattoir in the South Cariboo, now tentatively operational by August of 2011.

Although we have not determined a reasonably accurate estimate of the total cost for the phase one component, we are confident it will be approximately 30-40% of the $1,600,000 cost of building the complete Class A facility. Once we have a firm estimate of the cost of this alternate approach, we will be updating our subscribing members.

As always, we encourage you to contact us with any questions you may have, or to discuss our project in greater detail. Please contact Howie McMillan at info@southcariboomeat.coop or 250-395-6775.

The Board of Directors

South Cariboo Meat Co-op