Construction of new seed plant to begin May 1 at Oyen
By Joan Janzen
Prairie Wind Milling will be building a new seed cleaning facility in Oyen. Owners of Prairie Wind Milling, Jason Lake and Jarrod Kuhn, purchased the Acadia Seed Cleaning plant in September of 2021. While the existing seed cleaning operation continues to serve the community since the transition of ownership, plans are underway to begin building a new plant.
Jason Lake is also owner/operations manager of LPL Management, the company that will be designing and building the new cleaning facility in Oyen. The company recently relocated its head office from Lloydminster to Saskatoon, while their head office is located in Unity.
Prairie Wind Milling’s new facility will open local growers to a larger market and many more opportunities. Phase 1 will be located east of Highway 41, parallel to the existing plant, with construction to begin May 1 of this year. LPL Management will employ local sub trades and suppliers during the construction process.
The first phase includes the construction of a process building, 1200 MT of rough grain storage and 6 MT of clean grain storage, as well as the installation of the first processing line, utilizing the latest colour sorting technology from Italy.
Jason explained, that although this type of technology exists in other seed cleaning plants in the province, Prairie Wind Milling will have the latest upgrade for western Canada. “It sorts at three levels. We’ll be able to upgrade and clean seed more efficiently, at triple the capacity of the previous plant. We’ll be able to facilitate more than one grower at a time because the speed of the plant will be so much higher.”
The new plant will be capable of cleaning 1200 bus./hour, which is a vast improvement from the existing plant which, at best, cleans 400 bus./hour. Not only will the turn around time of cleaning be improved, but also the quality will be improved. As an example of expanded services, Jason said they will be able to pull out frost damage, enabling growers to sell their product at a higher value.
Phase 1 is slated to be completed and commissioned by September 1, 2022, and will employ six people. “We’re excited to be part of the facility and helping local growers,” Jason concluded. At an undetermined future date, Phase 2 will include further processing and a marketing plant. Be sure to watch for the upcoming facebook page for Prairie Wind Milling.
