A new 16,000 square foot warehouse currently under construction is going to keep operations moving smoothly and efficiently at Buffalo Creek Mills.
The climate-controlled warehouse will give the team a lot more room to work, explained Melvin Penner, a shareholder in the company and acting CEO at the time the project was approved.
"We manufacture about 13 different products here, so we need a fair amount of warehouse space to keep all of these different products separated so that when the orders are scheduled to be shipped out, we can take them directly out of the warehouse and into the trucks that are delivery the product to our customers."
The addition will also house the equipment that is interchanged between processing the various the products.
As well, it will be certified organic and kosher.
Penner agrees, this extra room is a testament to the many products produced at Buffalo Creek Mills.
"We produce rolled oats, stabilized groats, oat flour, oat bran, all these different products, and there's also organic, conventional and gluten-free. If you add that all up, there's about 50 different SKUs that we need to manage," he noted.
There is also a huge demand for oats and Buffalo Creek Mills' product.
"We supply manufacturers of oatmeal, nutritional bars, beverages like smoothies and oat milk, granola, baking applications, beer manufacturers and meat binders," explained Penner, adding their customers span as far as Poland, Mexico and across Canada, with the United States being the biggest customer.
The employees at Buffalo Creek Mills also come from all over the world, thanks to the former Rural and Northern Immigration Partnership (RNIP).
"We've got millers from different parts of the world that have a lot of experience," noted Penner.
"Our customers are really good to us. Our suppliers, our local producers, are important to us but most of all, our employees are the most important people because they make sure all the products meet spec," he added.
While growth in demand for oat products has slowed slightly in the last year or two, Penner believes the future is bright for the smaller operation located just north of Altona.
"We're an agile organization so we can ebb and flow to our customers' demands. We're not a huge organization where we just do one thing, we do all kinds of different things."