production supervisor

operator

packager

production operator

boiler operator

Agropur

Upper management lacks direction and lacks knowledge
Greatly surprised at upper management’s lack of fundamentals when it comes to a team environment. Day shift has more employees than it needs to operate, a total waste of labor dollars and favors them with picnics, and food that other shifts never get, and most don't speak English which causes lots of quality issues. I have seen so much waste of products, labor dollars, and poor execution I can’t believe it isn’t fixed. It’s like it’s ran poorly on purpose. Not to mention the lack of work ethics in many employees, it’s like watching turtles race turtles. Don’t get me wrong, they have some majorly overworked employees that deserve better. Also seems the place is disorganized; they can’t even tell you when you must train on day shift ahead of time to take care of your responsibilities. This place seems clearly stuck in the old days when it relates to employee training, development, and communication. There is a huge disconnect from upper management to employees, and it falls on upper management to fix, yet the ham-fisted approach is just making it worse. Like the old aphorism, “If all you have is a hammer everything looks like a nail.” Pay is barely adequate when compared to its competing companies, which pay on average $3.00 to $5.00 more an hour with pay increases in 30 days. Pay increases are not discussed during the hiring process or after so I can only assume there are none based on performance. I would expect more from a Canadian Company. I could not believe how backwards thinking was promoted by the man in charge at the facility. The employees are very cordial and accept new hires gladly, which is very nice. Lockers are of more than adequate size and a free combination lock is provided. Unfortunately, there is only a wide-open Men’s and separate Women’s locker room that basically gives you little choice but to be changing in front of others which is less than desirable. Very messy locker rooms and those being kept tidy are not even discussed, yet the break room is the hill on which the upper management chooses to focus on. Cell phones seem to be allowed everywhere which is a surprise these days in manufacturing due to the risk. Temporary uniforms are oversized and shabby with tears, holes, and stains. Some production machines are missing gaskets, have frayed hoses, and improperly sealed touch screens. Many leak fluid onto the floor which seems to me to be counter intuitive for a clean work environment, not to mention other issues. For the company claiming to be top notch it seems to be a joke. There are many unutilized screens that I can only assume were supposed to display information to communicate to all employes that sit unused and vacant of use. I worked at  different companies , so when I tell you that you shouldn’t consider this place for employment, please take it seriously. This place needs leadership and proper direction.

Independent work days on the road, however, ideas were constantly being discussed among colleagues in order to better your own individual territory.   Their ideas were sometimes better than your own, and visa versa.  

8-10 retail calls per day with a variety of people.   Some were easier to work with than others so one must be adaptable.

The experience I had with Agropur was invaluable.   The skill set they expected was second to none.   A high priority and mantra was "be the best you can be".   Aside from the sales skills, we were taught to think outside of the box to get it done.   There was no objection we couldn't overcome.

Management changed frequently so, in all honesty, some were better than others, however, we continued to focus on our objectives and regardless of our supervisors, push forward and accomplish the company's objectives.

My coworkers were an amazing team that worked exceptionally well together.   We have a respect for each other and truly worked together as a team to better our results.   Everyone wanted to see the other succeed.   While we are all competitive, we enjoyed taking part in a coworkers success.

The most enjoyable part of the job was the day to day, face to face contact with our clients.   We became part of their landscape on a daily basis and they looked forward to seeing us.   Nothing was better than walking into a client and seeing their face light up at the sight of you.

The hardest part?   Well nothing is "hard" unless you look at it that way.   The most unenjoyable part of the job for me was meetings that were irrelevant and time wasters.   We are here to sell a product, and sometimes, information could be transmitted in a more efficient, and less intrusive manner, than being in a boardroom all day.  Our objective was to sell, and unless it is a major product launch, something we needed to see visually, it could have been handled more efficiently. 



The workload was not terrible, although there is room for improvement. Good pay, benefits, exceptional training structure. I didn't quite have this experience, but I heard from other co-workers who also exited about the same time as I did that. That there were some issues with the way people talk to others and how respectful it is. I also heard about people talking behind other people's backs and even though they got brought up to HR nothing was really done about it. 

My personal experience was that I kind of felt like a babysitter. There was one co-worker of mine who had been there far longer than I had but they did not complete their tasks well. Myself and other co-workers of mine in the same position that I was would constantly go and check his stuff even though we had our own stuff we needed to be doing and that was our top priority. There were days when this specific coworker would offer their help to us and we would have to go back and redo the tasks that they claimed they completed because it was not up to the quality standards of the company. This in turn us to be overtime more than we got off work on time. I understand this specific individual may have had some mental disability of some sort that I didn't know about and they were also old. In my opinion personally, that should not be an excuse for poor work ethic. If you need to have a shortened list, that's fine, but you still need to get those tasks that are on your list done completely and done well. Unfortunately the managers did not have that same opinion. So if you're ready to be a babysitter despite the fact that it's not your job to be, then the job is for you. Otherwise I would recommend maybe a different position. Because to me the compensation and benefits were not worth the extra work. 

After working for this company for 7 years 2 months in which I provided Loyalty, Collaboration, Team building, Engineering concepts to help production operate more efficiently including ergonomics, custom fabrications, Training new hires in 3A Code within the welding department with no extra compensation for training. I would map out each job assigned by estimating cost, Draft blue prints, Figure quantities of materials to order per project with little or no material drop, stock supply trailer for emergency breakdown for all applicable projects associated with the  welding shop. Also fill out all Confine space and Hot-work permits and regulate weekly audits for cleanliness of welding shop per cleanliness in a food processing facility.  I spend countless hours with little to no guidance because they had no Project engineer onsite. I was it and sometimes a coworker. I had really good attendance and I would work on-call jobs out of normal working days on the weekends to help keep the facility running smoothly. While everyone either had no experience to fix or wouldn’t come in since it was the weekend. Had a revolving door of the position that assist me to run a 24 hour plant. 
 I’ve bent over backwards for this  plant to be given no accommodation after a new disability during a car accident, One I was not aware of from the start of this job. Resulting in FMLA leave for 12 weeks, Given only one extension of leave, and finally termination the day of extension end. Financially I lost everything because they wouldn’t hold on for 1 more month while I tested to find root cause of Disability. Earned 160 hours PTO in which I could not claim because in their handbook, I did not work for the year 2025 yet. Extremely disappointed! 

Though on the outside, Agropur of Lake Norden appears to be a professional, organized, and caring workplace, it is far from the reality. If you are considering taking a job here, I would recommend reading my review in full on their facebook page but here is the TLDR:

Their hiring and resignation practices are very misleading and underhanded. There is very little communication.
There is very little training, you are simply thrown into the job and expected to perform and many of the other workers are not supportive and have no patience for you. 
The conditions bridge on ridiculous, I would never work there in the summer. Workers more used to the heat than I, were dying of heat stroke in the fall, and there is no water allowed anywhere near your work environment. Expect to wear ear plugs full time and get wet often.
Much of the equipment is faulty and rarely restored to full-working order, yet management will expect you to perform to perfection anyway. 
The supervisors will attempt to rush production but only slow it down with their lack of knowledge and frustrate the workers who actually know what theyre doing. 
Positions are almost always understaffed. There were days when we only had four people when we're supposed to have eight.
There is a lot of dead weight. Other workers will take long breaks and do half the work and still get paid the same or even more.

Overall

I would not recommend this job to anyone. I guess I don’t know about other positions, but the company itself is  so unorganized and generally uncaring, that I couldn’t imagine another position being any better. They want the appearance of being professional and concerning--respectful, but I did not experience any of that from within.

Culture - Old world practices from previous owners (Davisco Inc). example quote: "If you need more than 2 weeks off in a year we don't need you as an employee" didn't matter if you had worked 1 year or 20. 
Even though Agropur has remedied this, that mentality is still in place.
Upper management need to learn to trust and utilize those they employ to be successful, they hired them for a reason. 
I enjoyed working with the production staff and the employees on the floor.  I believe we were working towards making cultural changes prior to my departure. 
Training technique, needs improvement. 
High turnover on the floor.
Agropur needs to step in to remove the old ways of former employer.
Pay scale needs to be adjusted (considerably) for entry level positions.
I was able to take a lot away from this role, including knowledge of dairy processes, handling many types of audit situations including FDA, USDA, halal, and many customer audits.  Also, improved on some leadership qualities and realize how not to make the same mistakes I saw. (treat everyone with compassion and consideration, don't make assumptions)

This place has lots of potential if it had real leadership and actual management. 

You can learn some good skills if your management was around more often,  they tend to quit pretty regularly. 

Work life balance is good, but they will guilt trip you for taking a day off for leisure or planned child event.

The benefits are trash, you'll pay out of paycheck and pocket. So why bother.

Advancement?? Nobody really knows what's going on, so don't expect to do anything outside of your normal routine. 
You'll probably have a new manager in 3 months anyways,  so it's like starting over with every season.

Hope you know Spanish! The intercoms is like watching Telemundo,  I'm pretty sure if ICE raided that place you'll be upper management come Monday. 

Safety is a joke, the non english speaking drivers of forklifts drive around corners with 2400 pounds of product and don't care who's walking in designated areas, they'll have 2 people hired for your job in a week just fresh from the border. One will stay.

The maintenance department is lazy, the shift electricians mostly got the job because they applied,  no formal training.  Doubt that's legal. 

After working here I refuse to eat cheese, as you'll walk around or in product and shove it back into the machine for reprocessing. 

We used to have 4 breaks, now we’re only supposed to get 3 and we work 12 hour shifts. People are currently trying to get a union involved! They say they are family friendly but people have lost friends and family and still got points for taking days off to grieve or go spend time with family in the hospital. We have NO sick days. Just to use FMLA you have to miss 3 consecutive days. If you call in because you can’t make it into work they use 12 of your 80 hours (for new hires up to 3 or 4 year employees) PTO and you still receive 2 points. Agropur does NOT care about their employees At All!!  I have been at this company for a couple years now and we’ve been through 3 production managers, the turnover rate is ridiculously high. They don’t want people discussing pay because of how differently people get paid in here! Plenty of opportunity for OT. However some departments have people working 6+ days straight(we work 12 hour shifts). It gets super hot in here in the summer and freezing cold  in the winter. Insurance is high and not the best.

I was lucky to start here thanks to a family member, as many of the employees that work here are. It started out very nice, but as soon as the management finds out that your willing to go the extra mile, they treat you like a dog. They dont care too much about the employees unless there buddy-buddy with them. The management team lets some people get away with alot of things but disipline others for the same thing. It is such a stressfull environment because everyone is affraid of loosing there job. I am very happy that i no longer work there. I developed an anxiety disorder as a result of working here with all the stress. The managemet team doesnt do anything about complaints when they are brought to there attention, instead they just say "worry about yoursel and not everybody else". but if another employee is makeing my job difficult or impossable it does in fact involve me so how do you handle it, thats a question i was never able to answer

* Generally good pay and benefits across all positions, very professional HR department
* Generally fairly clean work environment (with a few small exceptions)
* Room for advancement within the company

* Lots of nepotism at the high end of the organization
* Completely incompetent and useless IT department, filled with people who were both clueless and arrogant, caused massive problems on a regular basis.
* Very poor training  and documentation , lots of tribal knowledge
* Supervisors and managers often not familiar with what their employees are doing, when they do it, or why they do it.
* Lots of "we have always done it that way" and unwillingness to change attitudes from the employees with lots of tenure, even directly in the face of problems.
* Very little effort from the managers regarding processes and procedures
* Lots of lip service towards safety, but often times production was a higher priority than safety so corners were cut.


Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Production supervisor 21 salaries reported	$77,471 per year
Operator 3 salaries reported	$25.51 per hour
Packager 1 salary reported	$31.50 per hour
Production operator 1 salary reported	$27.56 per hour
Boiler operator 1 salary reported	$37.13 per hour

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