BrettYoung’s New State-of-the-Art Turf Seed Processing Facility Opens Doors
High-capacity seed cleaning at BrettYoung's new NorthCore facility. (BrettYoung photos)
Winnipeg, MB (March 20, 2024) – BrettYoung is growing — and so are its operational capacities.
To keep up with the demand from its customers who serve global turf seed markets, BrettYoung has made a $20 million investment in NorthCore, a facility equipped with the latest technologies for cleaning, sorting, and packaging turf seed.
The 60,000 sq. ft. facility was added to BrettYoung's 30-acre site south of Winnipeg, MB, where the company has operated since 1979. Six additions to the site have been made in the past 10 years as the company continues to reinvest in its operations.
NorthCore, which is the largest single investment in the company's history and represents its commitment to the seed sector, was built to achieve a new level in capacity while maintaining BrettYoung’s high standards of efficiency and quality.
The goal is to keep the facilities outfitted with modern processing and handling equipment and systems.
“We’ve had progressive growth every year for 15 years running,” says BrettYoung COO Cory Baseraba. “Our customers continue to want more products from us, and we’ve been limited by what we can provide mainly by how much we can grow and process. With several initiatives underway to increase turf seed production in Western Canada, we still needed to increase our processing capabilities to service our customers. And to do that with the same high level of service we want to provide is what drove the decision to invest in NorthCore.”
NorthCore features one cleaning line right now, with space for three more lines as supply grows. It has a pneumatic conveying system (a network of pipelines that move seed with air) to transfer seed around the facility, blending and packaging lines that process seed three times more quickly than the legacy equipment, and is all run digitally through centralized monitoring and control systems.
“NorthCore was designed to focus on turf seed,” Baseraba says. “With a focus on those products, it reduces the number of changeouts, downtime, and cleaning time. This also allows our employees to focus on specific aspects of the job and make it their specialty, making the entire system more efficient.”
Turf products that are processed, stored, and packaged at the facility supply both domestic sales in Canada and are exported to customers around the globe.
For more photos of the BrettYoung facility, see Seed Today's Facebook page.
BrettYoung is a privately held, family-owned agribusiness with headquarters in Winnipeg, MB, Canada. Proud of our nearly 90 year history in agriculture, we employ approximately 250 people in several processing and distribution facilities across Canada and in various sales territories throughout North America serving customers in three distinct markets: (1) forage and turf products that serve domestic and international markets; (2) crop input solutions to Canadian and US farmers, including BrettYoung™ brand canola, forage, corn, and soybean seed and biologicals; and (3) professional turf and reclamation products and services across Canada.
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Coated seed high-speed packaging line.