Wake up with RealAg

A Manitoba tile drainage pipe-manufacturing facility is back in the hands of its original owners.

Winkler, Man.-based Precision Land Solutions (PLS) announced today that it has re-acquired the high density polyethylene pipe-making plant at Winkler from Prinsco, which has operated pipe-manufacturing facilities across the U.S. since the 1970s.

PLS originally established the plant in 2012, under the name AccuPipe, before selling it to Prinsco in 2013.

“They let us know they wanted to exit Canada, and so we had the opportunity to take the plant back. Our company is in a different place than we were five years ago as well, and it made sense for us, so we’re restarting AccuPipe and we’ll be back manufacturing pipe again,” says PLS’s Chris Unrau, in the interview below.

“Prinsco is confident that our employees and customers in Canada will be well taken care of,” says Jamie Duininck, co-president of Minnesota-based Prinsco. “In addition, Prinsco is excited to partner with AccuPipe as a supplier, giving AccuPipe access to our full line of water management products.”

Financial terms of the deal were not made public.

Demand for tile on the eastern side of the Prairies has shifted from the early-adopter stage to mainstream, says Unrau, noting tighter cash flow is currently the main obstacle holding producers back from tiling land.

“A lot of people know this is a direction they want to go,” he says, “but now the conversation is cash flow. That’s a very common conversation throughout the winter here. People want to tile, but they’re trying to find the capital and cash flow to do it.”

As for the inputs for making tile pipe, Unrau says they can blend in a significant percentage of recycled plastic, and are having discussions with grain bag recyclers about returning agricultural plastics into tile pipe.

Hear Precision Land Solution’s Chris Unrau discuss the pipe-manufacturing plant acquisition, the possibility of using recycled ag plastics, and overall demand for tiling on the eastern side of the Prairies:

Related: Recycled ag plastics need a Canadian home

Five Manitoba farm groups have voted in favour of amalgamating into one entity known as the Manitoba Crop Alliance.

Farmer members of the Manitoba Corn Growers Association (MCGA), Manitoba Flax Growers Association (MFGA), National Sunflower Association of Canada (NSAC), Winter Cereals Manitoba, Inc. (WCMI), and the Manitoba Wheat and Barley Growers Association (MWBGA) passed a motion at each of the organizations’ annual general/special meetings during the CropConnect conference in Winnipeg on Feb. 12 and 13.

Over two-thirds of the members present at each meeting needed to vote in favour. Results for each of the meetings were announced on Thursday afternoon.

The Manitoba Canola Growers Association and Manitoba Pulse and Soybean Growers remain independent of the new group.

More to come.