A Wynyard-area company has been sold for $56 million.
Big Quill Resources (BQR), a processor of sulfate of potash (SOP), located on the shores of Big Quill Lake near Wynyard, Saskatchewan, has been sold to the U.S. owner of food, feed and road salt processor Sifto Canada.
On January 10, Kansas City-based Compass Minerals stated that it had completed its all-cash purchase of BQR, reported Farm Business Communications on January 12.
BQR makes high purity SOP for nutrients used by crop and turf growers, as well as for non-agricultural specialty applications.
The company's Wynyard site can process up to 40,000 short tons per year and produces much of its SOP by extracting naturally occurring sulfate from the brine of Big Quill Lake and combining it with potassium chloride.
BQR sources its potassium chloride through "a very long-term, advantaged supply agreement," Compass stated in a news release.
Compass CEO Angelo Brisimitzakis, described the Wynyard company as "an innovative, entrepreneurial business with unique production capabilities, technical expertise and non-seasonal applications that will both broaden and strengthen Compass Minerals' specialty fertilizer segment."
Compass expects the purchase of Big Quill Resources to be "immediately accretive," Brisimitzakis noted, adding that they plan to expand production at the plant and sales of the "high-value specialty products over time."
BQR's 2010 revenues are expected to be about $23 million with earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization of about $7 million, Compass reported.
Compass is already a producer of "organic approved" SOP, which it markets to crop, fruit, vegetable and tree nut growers in the Americas and Pacific Rim.
Other Compass Canadian holdings include Sifto Canada, based in Mississauga, ON, evaporation plants at Unity, SK and Amherst, NS, and six distribution centres in southern Ontario, British Columbia, Quebec and Newfoundland.
In the U.S., the company owns another SOP processor, Great Salt Lake Minerals Corp. in Utah, which announced in December a plan to raise its prices for all of its SOP standard and granulated fertilizer products by $25 per short ton on orders placed on or after December 13.
