Canada’s biggest grain handler has bought an expanded share in southern Alberta’s ag fertilizer and chemical retail market.
Viterra announced Friday it has signed a deal to buy the assets of Lakeside Fertilizer, the ag input retailing arm of XL Foods, for an undisclosed sum.
Billing itself as southern Alberta’s largest independent retailer of fertilizer and farm chemicals, Lakeside operates six retail outlets in the province at Bow Island, Medicine Hat, Taber, Brooks, Claresholm and Vauxhall.
The deal brings Regina-based Viterra’s total number of ag retail sites to 259 across Western Canada, the company said.
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Lakeside’s employees are to become “part of the Viterra team” and continue to serve area customers, Viterra said. The six outlets can also now offer Viterra’s “exclusive line-up of proprietary seed (and) private label crop protection products, along with a variety of custom services.”
Viterra noted its new outlets are “strategically located in a prime growing region of Alberta” and will allow it to sell inputs not only for traditional Prairie crops but for “high-input specialty crops” such as sugar beets and potatoes.
“This acquisition allows us to further leverage our logistics and distribution network, ensuring that our customers in southern Alberta have the right products at the right time,” Doug Wonnacott, Viterra’s senior vice-president for agri-products, said in the company’s release Friday.
As well, he said, it’s “consistent with our overall strategy to optimize our retail footprint in Western Canada and increase our market share.”
Lakeside’s operations in southern Alberta date back to a single outlet at Brooks in 1969, which bought facilities at Vauxhall, Claresholm and Bow Island in 1987 and at Medicine Hat and Taber in 1994 and 1995 respectively.
The company was bought by South Dakota-based meat processor IBP in 1994 along with other components of Lakeside Farm Industries.
Tyson Foods, a major U.S. meat firm based in Arkansas, bought Lakeside along with the rest of IBP in 2001. It then sold the meat packing, cattle feeding and fertilizer assets last year to Edmonton-based Nilsson Bros., owners of XL Foods.
