Gay Lea Foods and Teeswater: a road map for rural Canada
Expansion partly based on community values
This is an investment in the community, for the schools and for the families of Teeswater.
Back in 1999, Darren Ireland, then an employee working in the bagging room at the Gay Lea Foods-owned Teeswater Creamery, sat on a picnic table at Canada’s oldest operating dairy creamery and told me his goal was to ensure the plant survived in the town of Teeswater. After all, it was — and still is — the heart of this rural Ontario town.
Years later, when I was named president and CEO of Gay Lea Foods in 2014, we developed a more fulsome understanding of what this meant. Visiting Teeswater, we realized the importance of the plant and what Gay Lea Foods means to the community. At that time, there were many worries about the future. With Darren’s goal and the hard working employees of Teeswater in mind, Gay Lea Foods knew Teeswater had to survive.
What a difference a few years makes. This November, we announced that not only will the Gay Lea Foods processing facility in Teeswater survive, but it will thrive. Our $140-million expansion plan includes a significant investment in Teeswater to make Gay Lea Foods a world leader in the fastgrowing dairy ingredients industry. New equipment will soon be installed and the plant will help propel Gay Lea Foods itself toward a sustainable and innovative future.
Many businesses in rural Ontario, particularly those of the industrial or manufacturing variety, are facing significant challenges. Too often, news from these companies is about closures or layoffs, putting people out of work and affecting families who have to uproot their lives to move where the jobs are. And when rural businesses close, towns struggle. Young people move away, looking for work. Restaurants and local businesses suffer. Schools close.
We believe a successful investment is a comprehensive one. This means not just investing in a company but also in a community. For the employees of Gay Lea Foods in Teeswater, the future did not always seem bright. But with determination to see their community survive, they persevered and helped control their destiny. Through hard work and dedication (production and sales reached record levels at the Teeswater plant last year), they have made their plant a success, and we could not be more proud.
If this investment was considered based on only balance sheets and income statements, it’s possible a different decision would have been made. It might have been easier to consolidate our manufacturing facilities in the Greater Toronto Area. But this decision was about more than that for us — we know that investing in this plant means investing in the future of Teeswater. It means maintaining 85 local jobs and further growing the workforce in Teeswater. Our co-operative, at its heart, believes that for Canada to be strong … all of Canada should be strong.
This is an investment in the community, for the schools and for the families of Teeswater. And it is also an investment that will help make Ontario a world leader in dairy innovation and food manufacturing. That’s the key for the agri-food industry in Canada — innovation that builds real growth and drives profits back throughout the supply chain to where the products begin: right on the farm.
In November, Darren reminisced about a time when he began working for Gay Lea Foods 21 years ago. He worked his way up to plant operations manager and, with his team members, was able to realize the goals they had to keep their town and community strong. Co-operative ideals, hard work and innovative technology make Teeswater a great place to grow our business. We hope this investment will serve as a model to be copied across rural Canada to help strengthen our social fabric and build strong communities. Michael Barrett is CEO of Gay Lea Foods