On the fourth floor of Ellison Milling Company’s 103-year-old white flour mill in Lethbridge, Alta., Jason Wall weaves in and out among the wooden sifting boxes, just as he has since joining the company in 1979. We’ve already toured the modern durum mill on site, clambering up and down its five flights of stairs to check on sifters, grinders and their thousands of moving parts, and Wall, whose ears are tuned to every sound, calls out, “You know, the basic process of milling flour hasn’t changed in over 100 years.”
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e were running the old mill 24/7,” Michael Greer, president of Ellison Milling, tells me later. “Having two mills is proving to be very good for us.”
Mills are known for their longevity. While Ellison isn’t the oldest mill in Canada, it is one of the most unique, with side-by-side mills built about 100 years apart. Except for their age, they’re like twin flour mills, standing 115 feet tall on the company’s two acres within the city — an unmistakable landmark in the centre of Lethbridge.
Parrish & Heimbecker (P&H) bought Ellison Milling from the Ellison family in 1975, and the private Canadian-owned company has used it as a base for establishing a niche market for itself, catering to its customers’ specific needs and providing high quality, consistent product.
Its main products are bread flours milled from hard red spring, pastry flours from soft white spring, and semolina pasta flour from durum wheat, and it’s a busy place. The two plants process in excess of 100,000 tonnes of wheat per year, operating anywhere from six to seven days a week.
There are about 40 mills in Canada, owned by a handful of companies. The big players are New Life Mills, Rogers, Horizon, ADM and Dover. At capacity, those mills could fill 500 semi trucks a day with flour. Ellison Milling ships more than its share, running at about 400 MT per day compared to an industry average closer to 300 MT.
Ellison Milling also ships its output further than some mills, supplying bulk and bagged white and semolina flour to all parts of Canada, as well as to the U. S., Pacific Rim and South America.
In total, Ellison Milling has a base of about 300 customers per year, for which it produces about 200 products.
“Our focus is more on quality, special flours and special types of packaging and niches rather than quantity,” says Greer.
Local markets are important too. The mill for instance supplies Heritage Foods in Edmonton, the producer of Cheemo perogies. Even closer to home, the company sells flour to Let’s Pasta, a Lethbridge company that supplies pasta to Coco Pazzo, a local Italian restaurant, and it sells over-the-counter to local bakeries, restaurants and Hutterites.
“The customer usually has an idea of what they want,” says Greer. “Sometimes we develop it for them through our technical people. Other times they know exactly what they want but can’t find it anywhere.”
Giving customers the certainty that by buying through Ellison, they’ll get precisely what they want, load after load, has opened doors and keeps them open.
Still, there are tough challenges too, including the strong Canadian dollar, volatile markets and high energy costs, and it’s a multi-faceted operation, where every job needs to be done right.
Bob Grebinsky, sales and marketing manager, says outside of flour sales and markets, he is also responsible for package design. “Most of our packaging is not consumer-oriented, but rather targets the commercial segment of the industry,” Grebinsky says. “All packaging includes the required nutritional information according to CFIA. We’re absolutely committed to making sure packaging is correct and compliant.”
Getting the product to the customer is another crucial aspect of business. Three staff at the Lethbridge office manage deliveries of flour within Canada, to the U. S. and offshore.
“Our rates are always competitive — they have to be — having the best-cost, reliable freight is very important,” says Grebinsky. “If our product doesn’t reach our customer, he’s out of business because he can’t get enough flour to meet his needs at last minute.”
“We have an inherent advantage because of location,” adds Grebinsky. “We have the best hard red spring wheat because you can’t grow it anywhere else but in the ‘Wheat Belt.’ And 65 per cent of the land here is irrigated, which ensures a consistent, controlled supply. No other mill in Canada has that advantage.”
That agronomic advantage translates into a milling advantage. Grebinsky says Ellison can deliver consistency that’s second to none, meaning bakers who buy from Ellison will be more efficient because they won’t have to worry about changing their formula from one shipment to the next.
Ellison Milling is a licensed mill governed by the Canadian Wheat Board Act and adheres to a variety of certification standards. It expects to be HACCP certified this spring. The mill has 30 salaried staff, including administration, marketing, operations, controllers, quality control, technical support and management. In addition, there are 40 hourly employees.
“There are three ways we get grain — direct from the farm, from the P&H grain system, or we bring it in from other sources, such as Cargill,” says Greer. “No matter how we bring it in, the price is controlled by CWB.”
Rick Czarny, grain buyer for Ellison Milling, says 100 per cent of the soft white spring wheat and winter wheat is farm direct. In order to supply grain to Ellison Milling, producers must first meet the company’s specifications. Contracts are published in local newspapers, and vary from year to year. “We have about half a dozen farmers that we work with on a consistent basis.”
Elevator purchases are done mostly through Ellison Milling’s parent company, P&H.
“Our biggest challenge in acquiring grain is quality — we need good agronomics,” says Czarny.
That’s because, at the end of the day, the business is simple, says Greer. It’s built on one pillar.
“Our goal is high quality product,” says Greer. “In flour milling, our best marketing tool is ensuring quality and consistency.” CG
