While much of Olymel’s growth as a corporate entity can be traced to the 1991 merger of one-time rivals Groupe Olympia and Turcotte-Turmel, the pork division of La Coop fédérée—and followed by the 1998 acquisition of Aliments Flamingo—today it is mostly driven by relentless product innovation and finding creative new ways of doing business through strategic partnerships and joint ventures.
Last year, for example, Olymel formed a cooperative partnership with Groupe Westco Inc., a major poultry in New Brunswick, to develop and consolidate their poultry production, slaughtering, cutting and de-boning activities for the entire Maritimes region, which Olymel chief executive Réjean Nadeau predicts will result in a more efficient poultry supply chain throughout the Atlantic provinces.
“The industry’s future depends on the creation of a new business model based on partnership agreements between producers and processors, and integrating the production chain from breeder to consumer,” Nadeau asserts. “A partnership like the one between Westco and Olymel delivers better risk-sharing and opens up great potential to better serve the markets.”
According to Vallière, a lot of the recent product innovation efforts at Olymel have focused on producing more consumer-friendly products and packaging, with the company’s flagship line of smoked sausages—including the Olymel Original Frankfurters, Light Wieners, All Beef Wieners, BBQ Frankfurters and Cocktail Frankfurters—completely revamped with new branding colors and logo on the packages, the addition of the “Easy-peel” feature to allow consumers to open the packs by hand, and faster preparation time of a mere eight minutes in the microwave.
“And to make the consumer’s life even simpler, we utilize a new kind of safe packaging that requires no handling while the product is being cooked, or even prior to its placement in the microwave,” reveals Vallière. “You never need to remove or even perforate the film wrapper that seals the meat in the tray.
“Thanks to this new process, the film wrapper expands before your eyes—locking the flavor inside, while heating up the pre-cooked meats,” says Vallière, adding that many of the company’s fully-cooked meats are also made in such a way as to provide a good source of Omega-3 fatty acids and iron, with zero transfats and low saturated-fats content.
Vallière says that launching innovative new packaged products requires the use of the best-in-breed packaging line equipment, which is why his St-Jean-sur-Richelieu operation—a producer of the popular FlamingoChicken Breast Tournedos, thick medallions of seasoned chicken breast wrapped in bacon—has recently purchased a new packaging line from Montreal-based equipment manufacturer WeighPack Systems Inc.
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