always liked cheese, says Ivan
Balenovic, president and CEO of
Bothwell Cheese. I love it now.
People always ask me what
my favourite cheese is, Balenovic
starts to say, then we notice he s not
really talking about cheese anymore. He
is talking about his company.
There are differents moods for different
cheeses, Balenovic continues. I
like the smoked gouda. Sometimes I ll
have some truffle cheese grated onto eggs
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Before Balenovic and his co-investors
took over Bothwell Cheese in 2002 it
wouldn t really have mattered what he
wanted. His choices were thin.
The choices were thin for the
employees too. This was a company
where the order of the day was to just
get the job done. Don t think about it,
don t suggest improvements, nobody
wants to hear them.
But Balenovic s job was to lift Bothwell
out of its slump by focusing the
company s energy in new directions.
Instead of filling the air with orders and
commands, he decided to listen.
He hadn t really expected any surprises.
The purchase group targeted
Bothwell Cheese after two of the current
work for the company. When the cooperative
came up for sale, they decided
it had enough potential for development.
After nine months of due diligence, they
were convinced they were backing a winner
and completed the purchase.
It had infrastructure, a good
employee base, and some market recognition,
says Balenovic, who describes
himself as an investor and substantial
owner in the business. And what we
all recognized was that the company had
underutilized components. It had a good
platform for us to build from. We thought
we could take it to the next level.
Still, despite that groundwork, a surprise
is what he got. It was seven years
ago, and the first few weeks were a learning
I walked around a lot, and I asked a lot
of questions, Balenovic says. You always
hear people say that one of the biggest assets
of a company can be the employees, and in
Bothwell it was truly the case. They were
different employees, Balenvoic says. They
were motivated and with very high moral
standards. They thought there were better
ways to do things that had been done one
way for a long time.
When I came in, there were a lot of
suppressed ideas and dreams that the staff
had, Balenovic says. They were bursting
with ideas, and they hadn t had the
opportunity to put these ideas to management
and have them implemented.
From those discussions, a business
strategy crystallized. The group focused
the brand, and moving steadily
towards production of more high quality
and special artisanal cheeses.
We developed new and unique varieties
and flavours, Balenovic says. We
were able to enter new markets where
we could compete with the import
cheese market.
It created what Balenovic calls a
pull-up effect. It provided Bothwell with
profile and allowed it to develop and
create more market exposure. When we
started we had seven per cent specialty
cheeses, jalapeno pepper and caraway
seed cheese, Balenovic says. Since then
we have increased that to 25 per cent in
specialty cheeses, and doubled the volume
of business.
Those initial successes, however, put a
spotlight on a serious structural challenge.
We would make small batches, people
would like them, and then we would
struggle to make enough for orders,
says Balenovic. It wasn t just market
demand, but in upgrades to the plant.
Bothwell is in the final stage of expansion
of the cheese plant, and this will be
finished within six months.
In three years we will be able to balance
capacity with our market demand,
Balenovic says. Then we are going to
stop and enjoy the moment.
Back in the 1930s, a southern Manitoban
cheese factory wasn t out of the ordinary.
But of all those early co-operative
factories, usually created by the entrepreneural,
hard-working farm families of the
area, only Bothwell Cheese survived.
Today the hi-tech, modern facility
in New Bothwell tankers in close to 20
churns out two million kilograms annually
of its award-winning cheese.
In 1936 there were 50 small dairies in
southeast Manitoba, says Rob Hiebert,
production manager. It was
a common idea for farmers back
in the 1930s. Today we are the
only independently-owned
cheese plant in Manitoba;
we are the only one left
standing.
The small town of New Bothwell,
less than an hour south of Winnipeg, is
where the original factory went up in
1936. A number of the settlers in that
area were Mennonite, and many of the
staff in the now-enlarged facility today
still bear the same surnames of those
early pioneers.
The company s cheddar, based on
Mennonite tradition, is still made the
Cheese since the 1930s.
But the second you step into the
warmly-lit cheese store that fronts the
factory, you know that something new is
going on here.
The things that have made the company
survive were innovation, change,
growth and automation, says Jason
Wortzman, former director of sales and
marketing for Bothwell Cheese, where
annual turnover is now just over $20
million. There was a strategic plan to
increase business when new owners purchased
it from the co-op in 2002, and it
started with going away from bulk commodity
sales and moving to more higher-margin
specialty cheeses.
There were over 100 independent
cheesemakers in Manitoba 80 years ago.
Now, in addition to Bothwell, there are
only two other major dairy processors
Parmalat and Saputo plus a small
amount of goat cheese production in the
province.
But Bothwell is the sole Manitoban
bastion of cheese, says Wortzman. Some
locals remember the early days, and the
building of the first factory inside the
tiny village of New Bothwell.
Jake Banman, 58, is a local grain and
dairy farmer and still lives on the nearby
