The Food Issue
2015
Grains
West
26
coffee and juice, it also serves the best breakfast deal in town,
she said.
Sunterra’s magic formula, said Alladin, is the foresight of
the Price family, its founder and majority owner. Years ahead
of their time, they anticipated consumer demand for healthy,
convenient groceries and prepared meals. They’ve also
married commodity agriculture with direct-to-consumer retail
in a unique and determined way.
Less than an hour’s drive northeast of Calgary, the apparent
sleepiness of Acme’s evergreen-lined Main Street belies the
area’s history as a hotbed of forward-thinking agricultural
practice. The Sunterra Group of Companies is headquartered
here, in a nondescript, one-floor office block.
The modest situation suits the self-effacing clan that
operates one of Alberta’s most conspicuous entrepreneurial
success stories. Sunterra employs a staff of close to 1,000, with
sales of approximately $150 million annually. Majority-owned
by the Prices, two other local families, the Woolleys and the
Fredeens, are minority partners.
Sunterra Group president Ray Price leaned on the
boardroom table surrounded by posters of beautifully
prepared Sunterra take-home meals. He said the Canadian
grocery and meat industries do a very good job supplying
good product at a good price. Diplomacy aside, with its high-
quality product and above-and-beyond customer service
in tandem with competitive pricing, Sunterra has not only
differentiated itself with consumers—in Alberta, it has virtually
no competition within its admittedly modest slice of the
grocery market.
Ray Price is one of seven siblings, four of whom are active
Sunterra managers. The Price family farm, just west of Acme,
was established by Florence and Stanley Price in 1950. Price
family and Sunterra farmland comprises about 2,000 acres
in the same general area. Annually, the farming operation
produces up to 120,000 bushels of wheat and up to 80,000
bushels of canola, predominantly for the commodity market, as
well as a small amount of barley for silage production.
Sunterra Farms operations in Alberta, Ontario and Iowa
produce 300,000 pigs annually, and it operates two meat-
processing facilities—one near Acme, the other in the nearby
town of Trochu. Supplying the beef side of the operation,
brother Doug Price operates a cattle ranch and feedlot
north of Acme, with land around Rocky Mountain House,
Drumheller and Czar.
Florence’s father was born on the Burns Ranch south of
Calgary in the late 1800s. He settled in the Crossfield area
where Stan’s father’s family farmed. Flo and Stan met here,
and subsequently purchased land in the Acme area. Stan, who
died in 2012, established himself in pig breeding and was well
known in horned-Hereford circles. Stan and Flo passed on their
passion for livestock to their children, and all seven worked to
manage various farm operations through their school years.
Dave Price is past president and a company director, and
