Sanimax factory | Feathers, viscera and bureaucracy

It is one of the least attractive places in Montreal, the “innards” of which I was able to visit in recent days.

The Sanimax factory, made of faded yellow sheet metal, has stood in the Rivière-des-Prairies district since 1957. It is surrounded by oil refineries, a container terminal and a neighborhood of brown and gray bungalows.

You see the picture.

The company is criticized by many neighbors. It was entangled in a series of disputes with the City of Montreal. All this because of his activities, which are disturbing: he is one of the largest knackers in the country.

Every year, 25,000 trucks leave Quebec slaughterhouses to deliver shipments of fat, blood, feathers and other remains of pigs and chickens here. Millions of liters of used cooking oil also end up there.

This unappetizing raw material is transformed into a myriad of new products: flour to feed livestock, feed for dogs, additives for biodiesel, even heparin for operating theaters.

Industrial processes are heavy. Grinding, cooking at high temperature, centrifugation, purification, liquefaction: all these stages emit a significant quantity of waste into the sewers and into the air.

Not to mention the odors emitted by deliveries of animal flesh, which sometimes hang around for hours in trucks before entering the factory.

My colleague Marie-Claude Malboeuf published a shocking report on the problems of cohabitation with the neighborhood, in 2021. Sensitive hearts refrain. We see images of a shipment of viscera, accidentally dumped in a surrounding street¹.

The climate around the factory was extremely tense at the time of this publication. Complaints, lawsuits and other threats against Sanimax multiplied. It smelled bad, in every sense of the word.

The atmosphere calmed in March 2024. There was a big step forward: the signing of a “tripartite” agreement between the City of Montreal, the government of Quebec and Sanimax, ratified by the Superior Court².

This agreement made it possible to resolve all existing legal disputes. And above all: it led to the creation, by Quebec, of a temporary “special intervention zone” around the factory.

Basically: this zone aims to allow rapid changes to zoning and urban planning regulations, so that Sanimax can quickly carry out a series of major works by 2027. A kind of fast track through the twists and turns of bureaucracy.

That’s the plan, at least.

Sanimax has committed to building huge garages to accommodate trucks full of animal matter (by March 2025), adding an air purification system (by December 2025) and building a vast water treatment plant (by July 2027).

A major $48 million project and a logistical headache. The Quebec multinational will have to maintain production in its old factory, while building imposing new structures on its rather narrow land.

Every week counts to meet this tight deadline. And that’s where the problem lies, Martial Hamel, CEO of Sanimax, told me in an interview.

“What we decided to put in place is all this work which allows us to arrive at the best solution,” he says.

The first permit applications for the construction of the truck reception garage were submitted last spring. Sanimax is still waiting.

The company fears that it will not be able to meet the first deadlines of March 2025 imposed by the agreement.

“We have something called winter in Quebec, which seems to come back every year,” quips Martial Hamel. But in reality, this prevents us from doing certain work whose deadlines do not take the seasons into account. »

The City of Montreal tells me that it is “analyzing” the permit request and that discussions are underway with Sanimax and Quebec. Difficult to know more at the moment.

What seems quite clear is that the company will have to put the pedal to the metal to deliver a first building next March – in less than four months. Even if she got her license tomorrow morning, it would be no small feat.

In practical terms, this means meat trucks might have to wait outside the plant for another summer, rather than in a brand-new sealed garage.

Martial Hamel invited me to visit the Rivière-des-Prairies factory with a fellow photographer, a very rare opportunity. The group’s industrial processes are very supervised, and the premises are frequently inspected, among others by animal food companies. Four hundred people work here over several shifts.

It’s impressive. It’s hot. The smells take over the nose. The atmosphere is “greasy”, for lack of a better term. Working here is definitely not for everyone. Sanimax is at the heart of an “invisible” industry, but essential to the proper functioning of the food chain, its big boss tells me.

“If we put the 25,000 trucks that enter here each year end to end, they would cover the distance between Rivière-des-Prairies and Rivière-du-Loup,” he illustrates.

So many animal remains – 460,000 metric tons to be more precise – which do not end up in landfills every year.

As “stupid” as that.

1. Read “At War Against the Stink”

2. Read “Montreal and Sanimax reach an agreement, putting an end to a legal saga”