How a city redefined itself: BRANTFORD IS ATTRACTING RICH DIET OF FOOD FIRMS
05/05/2005
Chocolate maker Ferrero Rocher is the latest to set up shop
City quickly being transformed from farm-equipment hub
DAVID BRUSER
BUSINESS REPORTER
TORONTO STAR
BRANTFORD – If it’s true chocolate comforts the depressed, no wonder Brantford’s economy is developing a sweet tooth.
There’s perhaps no greater symbol of the Telephone City’s economic transformation than the $50 million candy manufacturing plant that Italy-based Ferrero Group is building in the city’s northwest business park.
Set to open next year, the plant is expected to employ 600 who will make the company’s high-end Ferrero Rocher chocolates.
The opening comes at an opportune time, too, since auto-parts maker Westcast Industries Inc. recently announced it will shut down its foundry later this year. Ferrero, which is investing a total of $150 million in the operation, will supplant Westcast as the city’s biggest manufacturing employer.
The 600,000-square-foot facility is just the latest in a string of food manufacturing facilities that have chosen Brantford in recent years. Still smarting from the days when two major farm equipment makers left the city and left thousands unemployed, some welcome the influx of companies from a sector that promises stability.
“Chocolates are a great consolation,” said mayor Mike Hancock. “Let’s face it, no matter what happens to the economy, you have to eat. I really think (food companies are) are recession-proof as we’re probably going to see.”
More than just a consolation, sweets and other foods have helped the city redefine itself in less than 20 years.
There’s also Maidstone Bakeries, maker of Tim Hortons baked goods, which opened in 2002 and employs about 300; and Western Waffles, which employs about 220. As well, Pillers Fine Foods Inc., a 61,000-square-foot facility that produces meat products and employs about 45, opened last year.
There are currently 20 businesses involved in food products manufacturing, 12 of which opened in the Brantford area between 1996 and 2004. The 20 companies account for more than 600 jobs in the region. Not including Ferrero, the food manufacturing sector employs about 1,300.
Brantford now enjoying sweet smell of success
The start of that growth spurt was no accident. It was in 1997 that Highway 403 extended to Brantford, and that, according to city economic development director John Frabotta, has been a main catalyst.
“Since that time, we’ve had continuous growth in the community,” he said. “It just provides that greater access to markets and suppliers and customers. Now we’re directly linked to the 401 and QEW. We’re on the shortest route between Detroit and Buffalo, so if you’re exporting or importing from the U.S., we’re centrally located.”
Locating in Brantford also situates companies just outside the congestion and expense of the GTA. Geography proved a major draw when Dure Foods Ltd. Planned to build a new facility in Brantford two years ago.
“The price of land was very good,” said Scott Malcolm, president of Dure, which makes powdered cappuccino for Tim Hortons. “Brantford is just outside the GTA area, so land and building is a little less expensive. Labour is less expensive.”
Brantford was once known as the “farm implement capital of the world,” with more than 6,000 of its workers at either Massey-Ferguson or White Farm Equipment, both makers of combines. But both closed in the 1980s, prompting Brantford officials, home of Wayne Gretzky and Alexander Graham Bell, to rebuild the local economy.
Hancock remembers that time well. He managed an office handling unemployment insurance claims when the unemployment rate hit 24 per cent, he said.
“You can’t imagine. That’s worse than the depression,” he said. “I was up to my neck in all of downturn of industry.”
“The only good thing about that period of time is how well the community came together,” he added. “The whole policy of the is city is we no longer wanted to be dependent on one industry. Diversification was the key.”
Plastics and automotive are other sectors that expanded, Hancock said, but food manufacturing is undeniably a major focus.
The city has formed a “Food Cluster Task Force” to study the industry, and Careerlink, and adult learning program affiliated with the local school board, plans to offer a 16-week food manufacturing training program this September.
Now established as a food production centre, Brantford officials now hope the city has built momentum that will help attract other food producers.
“We can now start being marketed as a food cluster,” Frabotta said. “(Companies) can come here because they know they can have other services catering to that are,” he said, adding that an available workforce trained in food production will be a major draw.
Targeting food manufacturers was a good strategy, says Martin Bohl, manager of investment development for the provincial Ministry of Agriculture and Food.
“It’s not a sector that has huge ups and downs. It’s very stable, 6 to 8 percent annual sector growth rate,” said Bohl, who was on the team that took Ferrero to five other Ontario sites when the company was shopping for a home. “Bottom line is people have to eat. (But) there’s only so much people can consume. …That’s why you don’t see a huge growth rate, too.”
But Bohl also knows any food company brings with it the risk of recalls, and multinationals such as Ferrero may not have the same ties to the local community as a smaller company.
Sitting on a 65-hectare site overlooking Highway 403, the factory is still only a skeleton. But it’s gobbling up quickly depleting industrial land. The city has just under 13 hectares of fully serviced industrial land left but is working to add 31 more.
“The northwest sector 20 years ago looked like the surface of the moon. It had been mined for gravel,” Hancock recalled. “I think there’s just a sense, having gone through that period, we’re alive today. We’re busy.”
