Olymel parent Sollio Cooperative lost CA$337.5 million in 2022

Sollio Cooperative Group completed its fiscal year on October 29, 2022, reporting a loss before taxes and patronage refunds of CA$337.5 million (US$247.9 million)this year, including loss from discontinued operations.

(Courtesy Olymel)
(Courtesy Olymel)

Sollio Cooperative Group completed its fiscal year on October 29, 2022, reporting a loss before taxes and patronage refunds of CA$337.5 million (US$247.9 million) this year, including loss from discontinued operations. 

In the previous fiscal year, the loss before taxes and patronage refunds was CA$21.5 million. 

In terms of sales, Sollio Cooperative, the parent company of Canadian pork and poultry company Olymel, reported CA$8.9 billion in sales, an increase of CA$1 billion.

The fiscal year that ended in October 2022 represented a challenge for Sollio Cooperative Group, which had foreseen and communicated this in its last annual report. At the same time, some of the divisions are showing interesting results. 

“After several years of growth, last year we announced and initiated a recovery strategy and an asset optimization plan, which we continued this year,” said Pascal Houle, CEO of Sollio Cooperative Group. 

Despite results that fell short of expectations, the company said it had “excellent results in some business sectors, including poultry, further processed pork, crop production and the retail division with Groupe BMR. In the Agriculture Division, the repositioning plan for the grain sector is progressing well, the company stated, and the crop production sector had a good year despite the difficult situation created by the war in Ukraine. The Groupe BMR Retail Division has implemented a number of initiatives that have allowed it to navigate through these exceptional market conditions. After two years of sustained demand owing to the COVID-19 pandemic, a decrease in sales was expected compared with 2021. Instead, sales are up by CA$44.0 million (up 2.9%) compared with 2021. 

“We knew that the year was going to present a lot of challenges, and we took the necessary steps to return the company to profitability,” Houle said. “We took the actions we did with a view to limiting as much as possible the impact on marketing tools and services to member producers, which are at the heart of our mission. Of course, we fully intend to continue along these lines in the coming year.” 

A difficult context in the fresh pork sector 


 A combination of contextual factors contributed to challenges within the cooperative’s Olymel pork operations. These factors include an accounting depreciation of intangible assets in the Olymel Food Division, as well as major challenges in the hog industry owing to a number of factors, including the impact of the coronavirus pandemic, labor shortages, rising costs related to inflation and supply chain disruptions, the closure of the Chinese market over the first three quarters of the fiscal year and a four-month strike at the Vallée-Jonction plant, for which Sollio Cooperative Group says it is committed to implementing a robust recovery strategy. 

This involves reducing the number of hogs slaughtered and reallocating the workforce, as well as increasing the production of value-added products, in particular through the conversion of the Princeville plant, and the recruitment of many temporary foreign workers.  

“The current situation has a major impact on the entire pork industry. As a key player in the sector, we are committed to working together to find sustainable solutions for the industry,” Houle said. 

Although the situation was more difficult for the Olymel Food Division, the measures implemented allow the cooperative to foresee a reversal of the trend and more positive financial indicators. However, the sector remains under close scrutiny with a view to returning to profitability.  

Optimization plan 


 Following this fiscal year, Sollio Cooperative Group will continue along the path of consolidation and optimization of its assets that it took at this time last year. Therefore, its renewed management team, particularly since the arrival of Houle as CEO in September 2021, together with the members of its management team, will continue to take robust action to deal with the economic situation.  

These actions are part of a necessary and adapted plan, which was first deployed in 2022, and which provides for the consolidation of activities, the recovery of some operations and the optimization of assets, after many years of expansion, Houle said. This plan also aims to reduce the company's debt and achieve a better financial ratio, thus ensuring the cooperative's sustainability, while avoiding as much as possible the impact on members' agricultural businesses. 

“We have benefited from a period of growth with favorable winds and we had to deal with an extraordinary crisis. Since then, every decision is considered in light of the current situation and the future, and decisions are taken in order to return to the path of profitability,” said Ghislain Gervais, chairman of the Sollio Cooperative Group Board of Directors. 

“We are confident that the measures we have taken over the past year are paving the way for a better future for the cooperative. The indicators for the first quarter of 2023 show that we are heading in the right direction,” Houle said. 

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