Brandt’s Moose Jaw property will now be its primary manufacturing site for utility trailers. (CNW Group/Brandt)

Brandt to build trailers at new Saskatchewan plant

Equipment maker aims to free up space in Regina

Reading Time: < 1 minute Ag and industrial equipment manufacturer Brandt plans to start making its lines of utility trailers at factory space it owns in Moose Jaw, Sask., freeing up its factory floors in Regina to expand other product lines. The Brandt Group of Companies announced Tuesday it expects to start production of its trailer lines late this summer […] Read more

Signage outside an IBEW office in Winnipeg. (File photo by Dave Bedard)

CN signals staff to return to work Wednesday

IBEW, railway to go to binding arbitration

Reading Time: 2 minutes Signals and communications workers at Canadian National Railway (CN) are set to end their 17-day strike and return to work Wednesday morning. CN, in a statement Monday, said the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) System Council 11, which represents about 750 of the company’s employees across the country, had agreed to take its labour […] Read more



File photo of a CN locomotive. (Dave Bedard photo)

CN service continues as signals staff strike

Talks continue after IBEW-represented employees stopped work Saturday

Reading Time: < 1 minute Canadian National Railway is reporting “normal” rail operations after its signals and communications workers walked out on strike starting Saturday. Members of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW), which represents about 750 CN employees across Canada, served the railway with strike notice last Wednesday and started their strike Saturday morning, the company said. IBEW […] Read more


A mobile biomass densification system, developed at PAMI in Portage la Prairie and shown here in a 2012 video, was used to process biomass such as straw into solid blocks, for ease of transport or for use in biomass burners. (BioScience Association Manitoba video screengrab via YouTube)

PAMI to close Portage la Prairie location

Revenue challenges in recent years blamed for Manitoba site's closure

Reading Time: < 1 minute The product development, testing and design firm Prairie Agricultural Machinery Institute (PAMI), will be closing its Portage la Prairie, Man. location at the end of July. Citing revenue challenges in recent years as the reason for downsizing, the institute informed staff and clients of the closure of its River Road facility in Portage, prior to […] Read more

Pickup trucks roll out of General Motors’ assembly plant at Oshawa, Ont. (Media.gm.ca)

GM CEO says ‘we are selling every truck we can build’

Rising fuel prices not seen undermining big truck demand, yet

Reading Time: < 1 minute Detroit | Reuters — General Motors CEO Mary Barra said on Monday the automaker is “selling every truck we can build” and expanding North American truck-building capacity, even as U.S. gasoline prices hit record highs. Barra made her comments during the automaker’s annual shareholder meeting. GM is pursuing a two-track strategy: Investing heavily in electric […] Read more


Claas’s combine assembly plant in Krasnodar, Russia, in 2005.

Watching a new world order unfold

How much damage is 2022 doing to global supply chains for equipment manufacturers?

Reading Time: 6 minutes I remember watching the start of the 1970s BBC series The World at War. The screen showed the wreckage of a French village. Over it, Lawrence Olivier entoned, “Down this road in 1944, the soldiers came. When they left, a community which had lived for a thousand years was dead.” If such a documentary was […] Read more

(Dave Bedard photo)

‘Petro-plectic’ anger rises toward fuel prices

Fuel refiners seen booking 'epic' revenues

Reading Time: 2 minutes MarketsFarm — Fuel prices are very likely to continue to increase with summer approaching, according to Tom Kloza, the Florida-based global head of energy analysis for Oil Price Information Services. “I wish I could say there’s a light at the end of the tunnel, but I would say right now, it’s just a flicker,” he […] Read more


Olds College president Stuart Cullum announces a new partnership with Saskatchewan Polytechnic. (Liam O’Connor photo)

Partnership gives Prairie ag students new 800-acre opportunity

Saskatchewan farmland bequest expanded Smart Farm eastward

Reading Time: 2 minutes Students from Saskatchewan Polytechnic and Olds College will be getting more opportunities to collaborate with each other on a large scale. The two institutions have signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) which entails both schools working together for five years on various programs, notably Olds College’s Smart Farm operation. The partnership comes as a result […] Read more

Specialty Enterprises’ AG TRK430 132-foot Millennium spray boom in operation. (Specialtyllc.net)

CNH buys spray boom manufacturing capacity

Specialty Enterprises has supplied Case IH with booms

Reading Time: < 1 minute A Wisconsin company that has supplied aluminum spray booms for Case IH sprayer product lines has been brought in-house. CNH Industrial, owner of the Case IH and New Holland brands, announced May 23 it has bought Specialty Enterprises, which is billed as North America’s biggest maker of aluminum spray booms for farm applications as well […] Read more