COVER STORY
Installed at the Belmont Meats plant by Reiser (Canada) Ltd., the Repak horizontal form/fill/seal machine is a highspeed workhorse with plenty of operational flexibility.
Happily for folks at the Belmont Meats frozen meat processing and packaging plant in north Toronto, continuous innovation and improvement are all part and parcel of the company’s hard-working team spirit and ethic that has enabled it to maintain a steady upwardly growth curve from the get-go some five decades ago. Celebrating its 50th anniversary this year, Belmont Meats is a proud daily practitioner of the company’s firm belief in the virtue of “making safe, affordable, great-tasting food choice available to everyone and to inspire others with the same beliefs.”
The Belmont Meats facility specializes in producing “made to specification” burgers for some of North America’s leading fastfood restaurants and reatilers in strict accordance with the clients’ recipes, using the highest-quality meat and ingredients.
CLEAN OPERATOR Employing about 160 people at a spanking-clean, 50,000-square-foot production facility housing five production lines, including a segregated allergenfree production line and a steak portioning line, the federally-inspected Belmont Meats facility excels in the production of “made to specification” beef products retailing across North America and select international markets as private-label offerings and as Belmont-branded meal solutions, along with supplying a broad range of foodservice customers in QSR (quick-service restaurant), casual and fastdining, and institutional market segments. Boasting internationally-recognized HACCP (Hazardous Analysis Critical Control Points) and SQF
(Safe Quality Food Institute) certifications for food safety assurance, the busy plant turns out well over 200 different SKUs (stock-keeping units) for a diverse list of loyal customers, including many of the top retailers and restaurant chains in Canada . While traditional, pure-beef and source-ground frozen burger patties account for well over 80 per cent of the plant’s weekly processing output of about 1.3 million pounds of meat, Belmont Meats has made great strides to diversify its product portfolio in recent years, particularly on the retail side of the business, with exciting new products that nowadays comprise portioned and/or marinated steaks, primal cuts and roasts, as well as made-to-order
custom-butchered beef cuts. Even among the seemingly straightforward frozen burger and patty offerings, Belmont Meats produces a remarkably broad variety of products covering the full gamut of mouthwatering recipes from 100-percent sirloin and Angus beef to prime rib, chuck, brisket and sirloin grinds. According to vice-president of operations Eric Van Zyl, being able to offer Canadian consumers such a diverse range of premium-quality products made from the finest cuts of beef sourced across Canada and worldwide—along with some processed pork and poultry—is playing a big role in the current market success of the company’s f lagship Belmont
NOVEMBER 2016 • CANADIAN PACKAGING WWW.CANADIANPACKAGING.COM • 13