Siwin Foods has expanded its facility in south Edmonton as the company increases its exports of Asian-style foods to Japan and Mexico, spurred in part by tariffs from the United States.
The food manufacturing company has added 25,000 square feet to its facility in Discovery Business Park in Edmonton, as well as two flour silos in a $51-million project. The new space allows the company to make 150,000 dumplings per hour at the facility, an increase from its previous output of 30,000 per hour (plus 20,000 per hour at a rented facility in Leduc), the company's vice-president Gord DeJong told Taproot.
Siwin started about 20 years ago at the Alberta Food Centre in Leduc. The facility leases space to food startups and established companies to develop, process, and package food products for consumers. (The centre is looking for people to try new products as taste panellists.) Other companies that got their start at the centre include Aliya's Foods, which produces samosas, Red House Salsa, and Groundswell Food Group.
DeJong said the facility was instrumental to Siwin's success. "I do think for starting from scratch like what we did, the Alberta government has a really good program that helps a company start from nothing and be able to expand into something, like we have done over the past 20 years," DeJong said. "The biggest advantage of having that facility is the fact that you are able to start up at a lower risk."
The province's rich agricultural industry is another reason why Alberta is so advantageous for food manufacturing companies. In a 2022 blog post, Edmonton Global's Jeff Bell wrote that the Edmonton region has 2.4 million acres of arable farmland, and that the soil is high quality. DeJong said that Siwin uses as many Canadian ingredients as it can, including flour from Calgary, and that Alberta's beef, pork, and chicken are of especially high quality.
Siwin began exporting to Japan in 2016 and to the United States a few years ago. Mexico is the company's most recent export market. DeJong said a few years ago, federal trade commissioners told Siwin that Asian food was trending in Mexico, so the company started pursuing sales in that country. Just as Siwin dumpings showed up in Mexico, U.S. President Donald Trump's tariffs changed the culture of trade between the three countries.
"The tariffs came in just as we really started picking that up, and Mexico is in a similar situation as Canada, and they are far more interested in buying from Canada than they are from the U.S.," DeJong said. "So, our timing to move into that market has been perfect, really."