UFA Co-operative Ltd. is launching its first Farm and Ranch Supply store in Saskatchewan in 2026 and it will be the first for the company outside of Alberta.
The new location will be situated in Emerald Park just east of Regina.
The company said the new store, located at 850 North Service Road, will offer highway visibility and convenient access from two Highway 1 overpasses. Just nine kilometres east of Regina, the site is ideally positioned to support local producers and businesses.
The five-acre development includes buildings totaling 18,600 square feet: a 9,300-square-foot Farm Store; a 4,400-square-foot Building Materials structure; a 4,500-square-foot Cold Storage building; and a compact Chem Shack.
“While UFA has steadily grown its petroleum offering in the province, this new store represents our first full-service farm retail location in Saskatchewan, a new chapter in our commitment to serving Western Canadian producers. We’re deeply grateful for the warm welcome from the Emerald Park community and look forward to providing the trusted products, knowledgeable service, and co-operative value that our members and customers count on,” said Fred Thun, President and CEO of UFA.
He said the expansion reflects UFA’s ongoing commitment to investing in agricultural communities and growing its co-operative across Western Canada.
UFA is based in Calgary and has been around for 116 years, serving about 150 locations across Western Canada, primarily through its petroleum business.
“We are all about agriculture and the rural community and the rural lifestyle. So everything we do is geared towards supporting agricultural customers and the rural community,” said Thun.
UFA has its petroleum business as well as a livestock business, its farm and ranch store business and a number of ancillary businesses, including crop inputs, which are all focused on the agricultural community.
Currently there are 34 farm stores across Alberta, primarily in rural communities.
“We do have farm stores in cities, but these are true to their name. They’re farm and ranch stores. So you will see things like pet food, you’ll have lots of hardware and farm supplies, there’s building materials, and we have good crop input offers as well for the hardcore farmer. But whoever you are, there’s always something that you can find at UFA because our product line ranges from clothing and gloves to pet food, to hardware, and the hard-to-find farm and ranch supplies,” explained Thun.
Each store varies in terms of its size. It depends on the community.
“UFA has been a community hub in the communities that we’ve always served, and it’s looked different over the years. Today’s farm store looks different than it did in the 1990s or in the decades prior to that. But the mission and the mandate are still the same. The purpose of the farm and ranch store is to serve the community and the customers that are resident with it,” he said.
Thun said UFA has been growing and expanding.
“What drives our growth? It’s all about where the customers want us. So that’s the number one criteria here, is that when we receive feedback, that we have an offer that people want and desire, that’s what’s driving us to look at the community,” he noted.
“And then we have a whole process where we go through various investigations to see what’s the right spot to be in, do the economics work, and does the market actually back up the need for a UFA farm and ranch store?”
With the departure of Peavey Mart in Regina, it’s created a void for UFA to step in.
There is likely more expansion coming to Saskatchewan.
“I think the answer has to be yes because what we’ve seen so far is everywhere that we’ve gone, primarily with our petroleum offering—and we now have 12 sites in Saskatchewan—resoundingly, the community has responded well to our offer. And, given that, there’s just been greater demand and momentum for what UFA can offer. And I’ll be the first to admit, is when we’ve opened petroleum sites, the one question that I always get is, “When is the farm and ranch store coming?” So there has been demand for the farm and ranch store.
“When UFA looks at a community, we look first at what does the customer need and how can we meet that need, be it urban or rural.
The second thing that we do is we’re always trying to create value and benefit for the owner-member. So there’s opportunity with UFA as a cooperative to participate effectively in ownership and receive patronage.
And the thing that differentiates UFA that I’m probably most proud of is how we interact with the community. Through our recently established United Farmers of Alberta Agricultural Community Foundation (UFAACF), we invest in excess of a million dollars in local communities each year.
“And I think that’s one of the things that is critical to our offer, and it’s one of the things that makes us relevant to the people who, and the customers who we serve.”
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