Thorpe Meats Abattoir Project Suspended Over Lack Of Investment

Jun 08, 2022

Corey Priest is one frustrated farmer.

The co-owner, with his wife Shanna, of Thorpe Farms on Simmons Road near Odessa, has spent countless hours over the last three years developing and re-developing plans to build an abattoir, to serve not only for the needs of his poultry and lamb farm, but dozens of other family run meat farms throughout Eastern Ontario.

The original plan was to put up a 6,000 square foot abattoir on property adjacent to Thorpe Farms, but for a couple of reasons, including the need for 3 stage power, building a larger (11,000 square foot) abattoir on serviced land, within the boundaries of the Town of Napanee, was the latest plan that he was working on.

Priest, who said he is a “farmer first, not a developer” had to learn about regulatory environments, technical requirements, and financing options, along the way, all the while talking to farmers about their needs, going forward.

“There were a lot of hurdles to overcome,” he said.

That is why he was so happy earlier this spring when, after two years of hard work, the project got to the point where it was ready to go.

On the first of March this year, he announced that a deal had been reached for the land purchase that was the first step in bringing a new, state of the art, expandable abattoir and store to the region.

“Today I am very pleased to announce that we have signed an agreement of purchase and sale for a piece of land for our new abattoir and processing facility. The agreement has been approved by Napanee town council to sell 10.75 acres of industrial commercial land to ThorpeMeats,” Corey Priest wrote in a blog post on March 1.

The next step was to launch a formal equity drive to raise the $2.7 million, in investor cash, to go along with the Priest’s personal family investment, in order to secure financing for what is now an $11 million project.

Over the previous 18 months, Priest had met with dozens of individual and group investors, who had collectively committed from $4 to $5 million.

“I was really confident when we launched the equity campaign, just before Easter, that we would easily raise the money we needed well before the May 31st closing date for the land purchase with the town of Napanee,” he said, in a phone interview on June 2nd.

But as April came and went, and most of the emails and phone calls to people who had previously made verbal commitments to invest did not come back, he began to realise that he was facing another huge hurdle, one that he was unable to overcome.

“I don’t know if it was a change in the investment environment, or something else, but many of the larger commitments that I had been counting on did not come through.”

A further approach to investors, including to some of the farms that are looking for abattoir services in order to get their meat to market, went out in late May, but it was clear that the money was not going to be in place.

“I put the closing off for a couple of weeks with the Town of Napanee, but by the end of May it was clear to me that the shortfall was too great. If we were close to the $2.7 million mark, I would have waited, but we weren’t,” he said.

On My 31st, he sent an email to his equity investors email list announcing that the equity drive is over.

“Thank you for your interest in the ThorpeMeats abattoir equity drive. Our efforts to raise sufficient equity have come to a close and we wanted to send an update to everyone who has expressed interest. Unfortunately, the equity drive has fallen short of the amount required to satisfy the equity ratio required by our debt lenders for this project. Equity that was previously thought to be available has become unavailable and investment, to follow through, was substantially less than originally anticipated and indicated to us. The project will be on hold indefinitely as we do not have the equity required to proceed at this time,” the email says.

Although the equity drive has failed, Priest said that there is still a chance that the project will survive in its current form, but he is not holding out that much hope.

“There is a glimmer of hope,” he said, “but I can’t get into the details at the moment,” he said.

He said that if the project falls through, Thorpe Farms will be out about $100,000 in expenses, and he can’t count the number of hours that have gone into bringing the project to this stage.

“If it falls through, we will look at some other options. It is a blow to us, but we can’t linger on this for too long. We will need to move in another direction,” he said.

Meanwhile, a number of meat producers in the region, who have been making plans based on ready access to abattoir services starting in September of 2023, are also having to reconsider their plans going forward.

(Editor's note – We will have more on the fallout from this story, in our June 16 edition)