Sollio Agriculture, the agribusiness arm of Quebec-based La Coop federee, announced Monday its Atlantic Farm Services business is officially rebranding with the Sollio Agriculture trademark, which La Coop’s other agribusiness operations took on earlier this year.

Sollio Agriculture said the change marks the last step in La Coop federee’s 2015 acquisition of Moncton-based Atlantic Farm Services, which distributes feed products, crop inputs, farm inputs and animal health products and operates feed mills at Truro and New Minas, N.S. and at Moncton.

Under the Sollio Agriculture name, Atlantic will continue distributing Sollio products and offering agronomic services to farmers through 19 Co-op Country Stores, of which 15 are operated by member co-ops in La Coop federee.

Those retail sites will keep their names, the company said, but “will progressively display the Sollio Agriculture brand.”

“This brand deployment will further reinforce the tradition of agricultural co-operation within Atlantic Canada,” Marty Donnelly, who’s now the Atlantic regional manager for livestock production with Sollio Agriculture, said in a release Monday.

The rebranding “demonstrates our position as a leader in the Canadian agriculture industry with operations in nine provinces and counting,” Sebastien Leveille, CEO of Sollio Agriculture, said in the same release.

Elsewhere in Canada, Sollio Agriculture’s businesses include grain marketing and handling operations and crop retail supply businesses in Quebec and Ontario; a joint-venture stake in Ontario-based South West Ag Partners; and livestock feed processing and services to the poultry, pork, dairy and beef cattle and horse sectors.

Sollio Agriculture already made a new mark in Atlantic Canada in April when it announced it would put up $4.2 million to have a new grain elevator facility built at Truro for use starting this fall.

The new Truro site is meant to “serve a dual purpose of increasing reception and storage capacity — a recurring issue for field crop producers in the region — and optimizing the reception and distribution of proteins and grains destined for mills in the region,” Leveille said at the time.

The Truro elevator is to include five new steel silos — two for grain, mainly corn and wheat, and three for byproducts used in feed manufacturing — plus five loading bins, a continuous weighing system and new office space.

Sollio Agriculture in April said it expected that by 2020 it would handle annual volume of around 100,000 tonnes, which would mean taking in an additional 25,000 tonnes of grains and 37,500 tonnes of proteins. — Glacier FarmMedia Network

CORRECTION, Dec. 6, 2019 — An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated Elite, La coop federee’s seed business, had also rebranded under the Sollio Agriculture name. We regret the error.

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The deal, for an undisclosed sum, will see La Coop take over Co-op Atlantic’s feed mills at Moncton and at New Minas and Truro, N.S., as well as the Moncton-based co-operative’s farm supply and general merchandising division and its grain brokerage.

Co-op Atlantic, which has been under creditor protection since June, has since been shedding assets in a bid to deal with the organization’s “persistent financial challenges,” and has so far sold its wholesale and retail food and gas businesses to Sobeys and its Co-op Energy assets to fuel retailer CST Canada.

The agribusiness sale to La Coop, which has already received Court of Queen’s Bench approval but still needs to be cleared by the federal Competition Bureau, is expected to close next month, Co-op Atlantic said Tuesday in a release.

Co-op Atlantic CEO Bryan Inglis said the deal is “in the best interests of Co-op Atlantic and its stakeholders, and will help to ensure that the co-operative movement remains within Atlantic Canada, which is great news for the region’s farmers and producers.”

The deal is in keeping with La Coop’s “already well-established relationship with Co-op Atlantic and producers in the Maritimes,” La Coop president Denis Richard said in a separate release. “This will therefore ensure that the tradition of agricultural co-operation with the Atlantic provinces will be followed.”

La Coop, which is already active in grain marketing, farm supply retailing (Unimat) and retail fuel (Sonic), is expected to offer employment to “the majority” of current Co-op Agriculture staff once the deal closes, Co-op Atlantic said.

The Quebec co-operative is “very familiar with this region and we believe will be a good fit for the local farmers and for the family of independently-owned agricultural stores across the region,” Inglis added.

Richard said La Coop would “continue to operate the activities in the sectors acquired and to offer quality agricultural products and services to the farmers in that region and to all current clients.”

Co-op Atlantic last week announced it has also reached a “stalking horse” deal for its stake in Newfoundland-based poultry producer and processor Country Ribbon, with Nova Scotia poultry producer Atlantic Poultry Inc. (API).

The deal allows Co-op Atlantic to continue to seek out better offers for its Country Ribbon stake for 30 days. If no better offer appears, API can close its deal for Country Ribbon, but if a better offer is made, API has the right to come forward with a matching offer within five days or walk away.

Co-op Atlantic’s deal with API also already has court approval, Co-op Atlantic noted. –– AGCanada.com Network

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Co-op Atlantic’s board of directors last month rolled out a proposal in which the organization would make a deal with Nova Scotia-based grocery giant Sobeys for the co-op’s food- and fuel-related wholesale and retail assets.

The board’s now-ratified proposal calls for it to negotiate a deal in which Sobeys would buy the “majority” of Co-op Atlantic’s corporate-owned food and gas retail sites — and Co-op Atlantic’s wholesale assets, which serve the Valufoods grocery and RiteStop convenience store chains.

An undecided number of the “corporate” stores operated by Co-op Atlantic would be sold — but stores owned by Co-op Atlantic’s local-level member co-operatives would remain co-ops, the organization said.

“This decision by member-owners is the best option to ensure the long-term viability of the close to 60 independently owned co-op member stores across the region,” Bryan Inglis, Co-op Atlantic’s interim CEO, said in a release Wednesday.

The independently-owned local co-ops’ stores, he said, will thus have to find new wholesalers to provide their products — and Sobeys, he noted, has already been meeting with each of those co-operatives “to potentially enter into a wholesale agreement.”

“Next steps”

Moncton-based Co-op Atlantic said Wednesday it’s also launched a “full review” of its other lines of business.

Those include its agriculture division, which operates under the Co-op Country Stores banner and deals in feed, seed and farm equipment as well as horse and pet foods and supplies. Co-op Atlantic operates four feed mills in Atlantic Canada and brokerages to buy feed inputs from farmers in the region.

Co-op Atlantic’s agriculture business also invests locally through its Atlantic Tender Beef program and buys vegetables and other produce from farmers in the region.

Co-op Fuels and Petroleum, meanwhile, supplies gas and diesel products, home heating fuel, heating equipment, lubricants and related products to Co-op Atlantic’s farmer members.

Co-op Atlantic also operates 11 Medicine Shoppe pharmacies in Atlantic Canada, and has a real estate arm, Avide Developments, which provides design/build and property development services and operates APHL (Atlantic Peoples’ Housing).

Once Co-op Atlantic’s reviews of those divisions are complete, the co-op said it “will be in a better position to determine next steps.”

“Toughest aspect”

It’s not yet known, Co-op Atlantic said, how many jobs will be affected in a sale of food and gas assets, or when those jobs would be affected.

“The timing of that impact will be determined following the completion of the proposed purchase and sales agreement,” the co-op said. It’s expected to take “a number of months” for Co-op Atlantic to complete that deal and exit the businesses in question.

Job losses, Inglis said, will be “the toughest aspect of the accepted recommendation by member-owners,” but Co-op Atlantic plans to provide affected staff with counseling and resource services “to assist them in finding a new opportunity.” — AGCanada.com Network

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Co-op Atlantic said Saturday its board recommends members vote by a May 12 deadline in favour of the organization divesting its food and fuel wholesale assets.

Co-op Atlantic is the overarching body for 128 co-ops in Atlantic Canada and Quebec’s Magdalen Islands, with stakes in the region’s farm retail input and supply sectors and the home and farm energy business, as well as the food and fuel retail sectors.

Specifically, the board recommends a deal to sell the food and fuel assets — which include Co-op and Valufoods stores across the region, three distribution centres and over 40 gas stations — to Nova Scotia-based grocery giant Sobeys.

A proposed deal would see Sobeys buy “the majority” of Moncton-based Co-op Atlantic’s corporate food and gas retail sites and wholesale assets across the region, the co-op said.

The co-op’s owner-members, the board said, should negotiate wholesale supply agreements with Sobeys “to ensure their long-term success moving forward.” Those potential agreements would be decided by each member-owned store in talks with Sobeys.

Once the members’ vote is complete, Co-op Atlantic said it will be “in a better position to assess what this will mean for Co-op Atlantic and its remaining divisions moving forward, including home energy and agriculture.”

The co-op, and its member co-operatives, “have worked hard to remain viable in the increasingly competitive world of retail food and gas,” board chair Adelard Cormier, of St-Paul-de-Kent, N.B., said in a release Saturday.

“This decision has been a difficult one for management and the board but is, we believe, the best option for the continued viability of the member-owner stores and the co-operative movement in Atlantic Canada.”

“Disservice to everyone”

In its 2012-13 fiscal year, Co-op Atlantic booked total sales of $631 million, up six per cent from the previous year, but noted a two per cent drop in food unit sales.

Co-op members and consumers “have changed their buying patterns, resulting in a contraction of the Atlantic Canadian food market during the past year,” the co-op said in June 2013.

One Co-op Atlantic-operated retail grocery store in Nova Scotia, the Pictou Co-op Food Market, shut down in 2013 citing “declining sales and mounting losses over the last five years.”

The store had a membership of over 8,000, Co-op Atlantic said at the time, but found member support of the food store was “not strong enough to keep the operation viable.”

A study showed nearly 2,200 members at “had not made a single purchase during the past year and only 272 members showed purchases worth over $60 a week.

In late 2010, a Co-op Food Market in Saint John, N.B. also shut its doors, with Co-op Atlantic noting “a full third of the (local co-op’s) 4,200 members were not supporting the Co-op at all.”

“To continue operations with no prospect of profitability would be a disservice to everyone, especially the member-owners of the co-operative system,” Ron Montgomery, area manager for Co-op Atlantic, said at the time.

Sobeys, by comparison, booked $21 billion in sales in fiscal 2014, up 20.6 per cent from the previous year — due in part to its takeover of the Canada Safeway chain in 2013.

The takeover deal saw 30 Sobeys and Safeway stores in Western Canada sold to other retailers, in part to satisfy federal competition regulators — including 14 stores sold to Western Canada’s Federated Co-operatives. — AGCanada.com Network

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