Howson & Howson Ltd., is a long established Canadian Milling Company owned and
operated by the Howson family since 1875. Originally located in Aberfoyle Ontario,
Howson Mills has gone through several changes in its long history. From Aberfoyle they
moved to Teeswater, Ontario. In 1899 Howson bought a Feed and Flour Mill in Wingham,
Ontario.In 1931, Howson & Howson became a Purina outlet and were servicing customers in a 35 mile radius around Wingham, as well as selling flour to the Montreal market and exporting to Great Britain and other UK countries.
On March 1, 1957, Howson bought a second mill in Blyth. At the time of purchase, the Blyth location had only one electric light, employeed three people and operated one truck. The Flour Mill had not been in operation since 1934, so as can be expected major renovation and equipment updates were needed. In July 1948, the Flour Mill commenced operation. At this time they were able to produce 300 cwt bags of flour a day.
In 1949 another feed mill in Cargill was purchased. Just after all three mills were running nicely, in 1950, the Wingham location was struck by lightning and burned to the ground. This forced Howson & Howson to divide feed production between the Blyth and Cargill locations, and opened a feed store in Wingham instead of rebuilding the mill.
For the next 15 years business had steady growth, and mill capacities, both Feed and
Flour, were increased. Included in this were major renovations to the Blyth feed mill
and the addition of bulk handling facilities for both feed and flour. In 1965, the
Flour Mill had a capacity of 1100 cwt bags per day, and Howsons employed 20 people.In 1966, to Celebrate Canada's Centennial (1967), the Howsons started a Centennial project. This involved greatly expanding the facilities and services of the main mill in Blyth and building a new warehouse to handle C.I.L. fertilizer, bulk and bagged. In 1967 they employed 25 people, ran 7 trucks (three 9-ton, two 15-ton and two 20-tn). Mill production included 110 cwt bags of Flour and 25 to 30 ton of feed per day. On demand the feed mill could produce 60 ton per day.
In 1971, the Flour Mill was converted from a hard-wheat Flour Mill to a Durum Semolina mill. At that time it entered into a single-supplier contract with General Mills Ltd., for their pasta manufacturing subsidiary Lancia Bravo Foods. Lancia was a market leader with a national market share within Canada of 28% of the pasta market, plus export market principally the U.S.A., of 76 million pounds annually.
The customer base was subsequently expanded to include sales to Kraft Foods Ltd., Campbell Soup Co., Nestle, H.J. Heinz and others as well as export to Mexico, The Caribbean and South America.
In 1996, Howson decided to make a drastic change involving the procedure used for milling Durum Wheat. They were the first Flour Mill in North America, only the second in the world, to adopt the PeriTec™ process, installing two debranners. This now allowed for production of 10 metric tonne per hour (220 cwt bags). In 1997, Howson added a third debranner to the system increasing production to 15 metric tonne per hour (330 cwt bags).