Crews pour cement to form the foundation for the new G-Mac’s AgTeam Inc. fertilizer retail facility on the south side of the Village of Brock. The company hopes to start operating in March 2019.

 

Kenneth Brown
of The Clarion

G-Mac’s AgTeam Inc. is building its asset base by adding a new facility in Brock and the location is going to provide the company with access to rail service.

Ground work for the project started in 2017 and more recent work has included the foundation. The facility will be located on the south side of the village and rail access is one of several benefits of the company’s newest asset.

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“It’s very central to G-Mac’s trade area,” said Garth MacDonald, the president and CEO of G-Mac’s AgTeam, recognizing that Brock is within 30 minutes of three of the company’s retail locations and within 60 minutes of seven of the company’s nine other facilities.

He noted that the company has been talking about a facility in Brock for as long as five years and it will become the company’s 10th retail location. The company’s other locations are in Kindersley, Rosetown, Leader, Eatonia, Elrose, Plenty-Dodsland, Lucky Lake, Milden and Marengo.

MacDonald said the company has cleared 18 acres of land for the new facility. The company had just about completed its rail spur before the winter hit, but part of the rail spur had to be taken apart to install a pit beneath the spur.

The company’s CEO explained that the pit is where rail cars will be unloaded and the rail spur was scheduled to be reassembled sometime this week. The product will move from the pit to the storage bins. Brock will be the company’s 10th retail location, but only the second location with access to rail, MacDonald said.

G-Mac’s also has rail access in Leader and he said the company built a new fertilizer shed at the Leader facility in the spring of 2017. He noted that the access to rail a main reason the company chose the location at Brock.

He said there is no natural source of phosphate in western Canada. There is a processing facility in Redwater, Alta., and the facility imports rock to produce phosphate fertilizer, he explained. The facility in Redwater is closing, so all phosphate fertilizer will have to be imported into Western Canada, according to MacDonald.

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