“Every success story in the world comes from pig farmers,” Joe says. “They don’t make it and then they have to go look for something that’s actually going to make them money.” The Wipfs previously were part of a family farm in the Arborg area of Manitoba, where they would raise sows “farrow to finish” and ship about 25,000 of them per year. Supporting that operation required building and maintaining infrastructure, which led them to purchasing a concrete batch plant, some trucks, and some loaders. After seeing the quality of the infrastructure they produced, other local farmers started coming to them with projects to do around their farms. In those early years, the concrete work was strictly secondary to the farm – they only supplied concrete when it didn’t interfere with farm operations, so never during seeding season or harvest. Leadership sees that discipline as something that ultimately served them well. The business stayed grounded while it grew organically, with opportunities arriving rather than being chased. That period of measured, deliberate growth continued for a few years, until the company received their first commercial contract in 2008. At the time, Parkwest Projects out of Winnipeg was building a water treatment plant at Fraser River First Nation. There was no concrete supplier close enough to service the remote site, but there was a personal connection – one of the owners lived not far from the Wipf farm. There was also a condition – they would need to figure out how to JUNE 2026
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