Quebec meat packing giant Olymel has picked up a $2 million federal loan for three new bacon slicing and packing lines for its Aliments Prince food service operations.

Aliments Prince, which makes precooked bacon products for the foodservice, retail, restaurant and fast food sectors at St-Hyacinthe, will be able to increase the speed on its processing lines with the new equipment, the federal government said Tuesday.

The Aliments Prince operations have been part of Olymel’s foodservice arm since 2005. The higher line speeds are expected to provide the business with “more opportunities to get their products to market.”

“The installation of new slicing equipment represents an important technological improvement which will contribute to higher competitiveness for Aliments Prince,” Olymel CEO Rejean Nadeau said in the government’s release.

The repayable contribution to Olymel comes from the federal AgriProcessing Initiative, a five-year, $50 million segment of the Agricultural Flexibility Fund announced in 2009.

The loan to Olymel is the maximum available under the AgriProcessing program, which backs buying and installing new or “new-to-company” machinery and equipment in Canadian facilities to allow them to adopt new or new-to-company manufacturing technologies and processes.

Projects supported through the AgriProcessing Initiative must be completed by the end of March 2014.