Officials in Wollaston Lake are making plans to officially open the community’s fish processing plant.
The facility is the first-CFIA registered fish processing plant in the north and the first in the province owned by a First Nation.
Hatchet Lake Development board chair Ed Benoanie says the facility was set up in an existing building on the reserve.
“So it’s kind of like a pilot project for us. It’s not a very big fish plant but its potential to grow is very high,” he said
The plant will initially produce frozen, vacuum packed pickerel, pike, lake trout and whitefish.
Benoanie says the pilot project already has some buyers lined up.
“To begin with, we have some food people that wholesale a lot of their food, their groceries, and so we have a couple big markets here and we’re still searching but we have enough markets where we can sell our fish for the size of plant we have there,” he said.
In August, 20 fish plant workers were trained and 12 are currently working at the plant.
The CFIA registration will allow sales to the rest of the country and around the world.
The plan is to start out small and expand in the future, Benoanie said.
“We are going to be receiving some land title moneys that we’ve been negotiating for years and hopefully that will help us build a bigger plant. And hopefully we can serve not just the Wollaston Lake but the region within Saskatchewan, or Manitoba and way into the Northwest Territories and Nunuvut,” he said.
Benoanie says the band spend around $200,000 on the fish plant.
There was also funding received from the federal and provincial governments as well as Cameco.
The grand opening is planned for next week.