‘It’s been a long road’: Hamilton meat plants set to grow

A local meat plant is one step closer to expanding after a costly five-year stalemate with city planners saw them threaten to move business south of the border.

Venetian Meat and Salami hopes to more than double in size with a processing plant in Stoney Creek that would bring at least 10 to 15 new jobs to a labour market depleted by the pandemic.

Venetian - a staple in Hamilton's food sector - has been dry-curing hot Genoa salami and other products on Burlington Street since 1957.

The local company says the expansion proposal is mostly solved" pending a final approval from the Hamilton Conservation Authority.

Since 2015, planning delays and red tape blocked Venetian's proposal for building a new plant because it was zoned on a designated floodplain in the Barton Street and Lewis Road area, according to the company.

The company was courted several times by jurisdictions in the U.S. and Niagara to lure their firm elsewhere, said Daniel Dorigiola, Venetian's vice-president of sales and marketing.

They have a lot more incentive there, like no development charges," he said. But we had a lot of time and money already put into the (Stoney Creek) property which we've owned for years."

Dorigiola said the expansion is critical to maintaining the company's financial stability and boosting its domestic and foreign export markets.

There's a lot of retailers we're not currently (working) with because our capacity issues are such a challenge," said Dorigiola, whose grandfather founded Venetian some 65 years ago.

We're probably short 20 to 25 per cent of our product because we can't supply. By building a facility, it would help us immediately fulfil orders from our current clientele, but also help expand regionally, nationally, and get back into the U.S."

The new 38,000-square-foot plant - with 24,000 square feet for processing space - would double its 16,000-square-foot location on Burlington Street East near Gage Avenue North. Dorigiola said the Burlington Street location would close once operations in Stoney Creek begin.

The years-long proposal put a strain on the company, Dorigiola said. He said Venetian had to pay thousands of dollars per the city's request for ditches around the entire property to drain the land.

The city didn't make it easy for us. If we didn't have so much invested already, we would have moved," he said. But I'm just excited that we're almost there. It's been a long road."

In 2016, the city's manager of business development Norm Schleehahn - now the director of economic development - told The Spectator there was little the city could do because the land the family wanted to build on was designated a floodplain.

Some complex engineering and planning studies have to be done to make this possible," he said at the time. We're trying to work with them to make this happen."

Meanwhile, Alves Meats and Variety, a family-owned business which specializes in Portuguese-style deli meats, is also in the midst of an expansion.

Michael Alves, manager of the retail locale, said the 30-year-old company recently completed a 4,000-square-foot processing plant on the corner of Wentworth and Land streets.

We used to have a little processing section at the back of our (MacNab Street) location, but this gives us room to increase staff and production capacity," Alves said.

Alves said the expansion has brought two new full-time and one new part-time staff to the company. He expects to hire another one of each in the coming months.

Sebastian Bron is a Hamilton-based reporter at The Spectator. Reach him via email: sbron@thespec.com