Feedmill transforms into MacEwen Agricentre

MAXVILLE — Jim MacEwen was never supposed to be a feed mill operator. As a kid, he was allergic to the dust at the old wooden mill that his grandfather and father operated for decades in Maxville. That wheezy reality prompted his father, William, to sell the operation upon retiring in 1975. There seemed to be little prospect that either of William’s two sons — Jim and Allan (also allergic) — would take it over.

But Jim outgrew the allergy by the time he was a 27-year-old unemployed car salesman in 1983. “With interest rates at 22 per cent, I just wasn’t selling cars anymore,” recalls the president and owner of MacEwen Agricentre, which celebrated its 40th anniversary in September.

By then, the ancestral mill — previously known as Maxville Feed & Seed — had been closed and abandoned for several months. Opportunity beckoned. At his father’s suggestion, Jim rented the facility and reopened with two employees and a new name: MacEwen Feed and Fertilizer Inc. (since renamed to MacEwen Agricentre).

He never could have imagined such an outcome in high school or while earning his economics degree at university. “I had no intention of going into the feed mill business then,” he admits.

He found himself spending months manually cleaning out the old grain bins with a shovel and making feed deliveries in the operation’s single truck, a mid-1970s International with yellow body and black fenders. They called it the bumble bee. Fertilizer was blended in an old cement mixer.

“I really didn’t know anything about the feed business,” he says, remembering those early days as the biggest challenge. “I relied on the two people I was working with, and the customers were very supportive. They were glad to see it reopened.”

Today, the business counts 30 trucks, over 120 employees, and a network of three large facilities in Vars, Cobden and the Maxville flagship location, which was rebuilt in 2012. Fertilizer blending occurs at all three sites. Cobden and Maxville also have grain elevators, with a combined annual throughput of nearly 100,000 tonnes. Serving customers throughout Eastern Ontario and Western Quebec, the company also offers custom field-application services for both fertilizer and herbicides.

MacEwen Agricentre is one of the few independent fertilizer retailers left in the market, he says, and one of the few agribusinesses still offering the combination of grain elevator services with sales of feed and fertilizer (and other crop inputs like chemicals and seed). The company carries seed by Brevant, NK, and Pride.

Jim attributes the company’s success to customer support built on trust that comes from being a family-owned firm, unbeholden to the immediate demands of outside shareholders. He lived up to that reputation by declining to pass along the cost of Ottawa’s 2022 retroactive tariff on Russian fertilizer. “For us, we made commitments to our clients, and we adhered to them,” he says, adding the decision to absorb the tariff came at a “very painful” cost of several million dollars.

Success has also come by making long-term investments in the business to ensure “our equipment and facilities are second to none,” he says. It’s all part and parcel of “keeping up with the farmers” as agriculture progresses. “We’re always trying to stay ahead of the curve.”

The operation includes his daughter, Carley, who is operations manager at Maxville.

While MacEwen Agricentre shares its surname and iconic turquoise, blue and white colour scheme with MacEwen Petroleum — founded in 1976 by Jim’s brother, Allan — they are entirely separate companies.

However, both businesses are connected by a common lineage. Their grandfather used those colours as far back as the 1950s, according to Jim. Their father also ran an oil truck as part of his services.