Portage la Prairie, Manitoba
A town of 13,000 that holds the world's largest pea protein plant and a decommissioned air force base run as a not-for-profit landlord — and, like every Manitoba municipality outside Winnipeg, a free provincial value-and-sales search that will not answer a script and a $33 title that names the owner.
3 buildings · 2 with an owner established · 11 sources · 2 tier A · 1 tier B · prepared 2026-10-03
Portage la Prairie is under Manitoba's Torrens register, operated by Teranet Manitoba under the Registrar-General's oversight. Ownership is public but priced: Teranet states that "Anyone can search official land and property ownership records in Manitoba using Title Check" as a guest paying by credit card, at $33.00 for an Electronic Certified Status of Title on the schedule effective 4 January 2026. Assessment outside Winnipeg is done by the province, and Manitoba Assessment Online is free to anyone — but it carries no owner, stating that "In accordance with The Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (FIPPA), personal identifiers are not included as searchable items". Both PORTAGE LA PRAIRIE (CITY) and PORTAGE LA PRAIRIE (RM) appear in the province's free Property Sales search, which returns sales filtered by date range, sale amount and roll number.
- teranetmanitoba.ca — “The Account Holder and each User shall not ... (i) use the Teranet Manitoba Services or the Content to create a database in electronic or other format or for the purposes of data aggregation or dissemination (otherwise than for the internal archival use of a User), whether through electronic “scraping” methods or otherwise; (j) use the Teranet Manitoba Services for batch requests for service”
The marquee buildings
The towers that set the tone of the core, and who holds them. A price is the price a document states, on the date it states — not an estimate of what the building is worth now.
| Building | Use | Owner | Owner type | Last price paid |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Roquette pea protein plant Portage la Prairie, Manitoba 200,000 sq ft (20,000 m2) |
Industrial | Roquette Roquette's own newswire release states the plant is 20,000m2 (200,000 ft2), 'the largest of its kind in the world', will process 125,000MT of yellow peas annually at capacity, and started operations at the end of 2020. Roquette, founded 1933 and family-controlled, operates in more than 100 countries with turnover of around 3.7 billion euros and 8,670 employees. Portage's own economic development agency calls it 'the largest of its kind in the world' and the anchor of 'investments of almost half billion' in local food manufacturing. |
Family / private | CAD CAD$600,000,000 2020-10 Roquette's own release of 28 October 2020: 'an investment of more than CAD$600m of its own funds for the construction of the Portage pea protein plant'. This is construction cost, not a purchase price. A |
| Southport Aerospace Centre Southport, Portage la Prairie, Manitoba |
Mixed use | Southport Aerospace Centre Inc. Southport describes itself as 'a not-for-profit property management and development company' and the single largest landholding in the Portage region: established in 1992 after the closure of Canadian Forces Base Portage la Prairie, with '200+ acres of developable land for aviation, industrial, commercial and residential use', a 24/7 public-use airport with four runways, and 211 residential housing units in its rental portfolio — 188 of them former military quarters, the remainder newly built rental condos in its Centennaire South development. Its own site records 'over 200 residential properties'. |
Institution | —B |
| Portage la Prairie rail junction Portage la Prairie, Manitoba |
Industrial | Not established a paid title search would answer it Portage's economic development agency states the town 'holds the distinction as the only site in Canada where the CN and CP railways converge'. The two corridors and their yards are the largest industrial landholding in the municipality after Southport, but neither railway publishes its Portage acreage and no document we opened states who holds which parcel. |
Not established | —A |
The core land
The most valuable ground in the city, and what the public record says about it.
Portage la Prairie's land story is agricultural processing: a town of roughly 13,000 that has attracted close to half a billion dollars of food-manufacturing plant in a decade, on land that the provincial register prices parcel by parcel and will not show a script.
Who owns the town
At this scale the significant owner is rarely a trust or a fund: it is one or two local holding companies, a family in its second or third generation, and often the land around the town rather than the buildings in it.
Portage la Prairie is a city under The Farm Lands Ownership Act, so the Act's 40-acre foreign limit applies to the farmland of the surrounding Rural Municipality rather than to the city itself — and the RM, like the city, appears in the province's free sales search.
| Name | Type | Threshold |
|---|---|---|
| Non-Canadian individuals and organizations (statutory limit) The Farm Lands Ownership Act, passed 1983 and in force since 1984, limits foreign interest in Manitoba farm land to 40 acres and defines farm land as real property located outside a city, town or village that is used, or is reasonably capable of being used, for agriculture. Non-Canadians, organizations partly or wholly owned or controlled by non-Canadians, and publicly traded companies open to non-Canadian ownership must apply to the Manitoba Farm Industry Board for an exemption above the limit. Manitoba publishes no register of holdings and no exemption orders. |
Institution | 40 acresA |
Who builds the houses
New-home building in this market: the volume, and the firms behind it. Ownership of a builder matters as much as its volume — a private-equity platform and a family firm behave differently.
No name-level record of house builders exists for Portage la Prairie. The City publishes permit application pages but not a permit register; Invest in Portage's own Local Permits page returns HTTP 500. The one documented residential landlord is Southport Aerospace Centre Inc., which holds 211 rental units — 188 of them former military quarters inherited with the air base in 1992, plus newly constructed rental condos in its Centennaire South development.
| Name | Type | Rental units |
|---|---|---|
| Southport Aerospace Centre Inc. 188 existing rental units (former military quarters) and the remainder newly constructed rental condos in Centennaire South, Southport's newest residential development area. |
Institution | 211 unitsA |
Commercial landlords
The commercial side, counted separately from housing: who holds the office, retail and industrial floor area.
Portage la Prairie has no commercial landlord in the usual sense — no REIT holds anything here that appears in a portfolio table we opened. Its large buildings are owner-occupied processing plants and one not-for-profit estate.
| Name | Type | Portage presence |
|---|---|---|
| Roquette A single owner-occupied plant representing more than CAD$600m of construction, which Roquette's own release calls the largest pea protein plant in the world. |
Family / private | 200,000 sq ftA |
| Southport Aerospace Centre Inc. A not-for-profit property management and development company holding the former CFB Portage la Prairie: aviation and aerospace training facilities, light manufacturing, educational institutions, accommodation buildings, an airport with four runways and over 200 residential properties. |
Institution | 200+ acres and 211 rental unitsA |
Looked for and not found
Claims this page would have made if a source could be opened. They are left out rather than guessed.
- Every assessed value and every sale price in Portage la Prairie. Both are free and public to a browser through Manitoba Assessment Online, which covers PORTAGE LA PRAIRIE (CITY) and PORTAGE LA PRAIRIE (RM), but the server refuses every scripted request.
- Whether McCain Foods and J.R. Simplot operate processing plants in Portage la Prairie. Both are commonly associated with the town, but McCain's locations page 404s and Simplot's redirects to a 404, so neither could be confirmed from the companies' own sites and neither is named on the City's or the region's pages.
- The acreage the Canadian National and Canadian Pacific Kansas City corridors and yards occupy in Portage la Prairie, the only place in Canada where the two converge.
- The registered owner of the land under Southport Aerospace Centre. Southport describes itself as a not-for-profit property management and development company operating the former air base, which is not the same as a statement that it holds title.
- Who builds houses in Portage la Prairie. Neither the City nor the region publishes a permit register with applicant names, and the region's Local Permits page returns HTTP 500.
Sources
- Check Your Title — Public Land & Title Records — Teranet Manitoba · openA
- Land Titles Fees — Fee Schedule effective January 4, 2026 — Teranet Manitoba · openA
- Teranet Manitoba Terms of Use, October 1, 2026 — Teranet Manitoba · openA
- Manitoba Assessment Online — Property Sales (municipality list includes PORTAGE LA PRAIRIE (CITY) code 550 and PORTAGE LA PRAIRIE (RM) code 163) — Manitoba Municipal and Northern Relations · openA
- Manitoba Assessment Online — property search (FIPPA note on personal identifiers) — Manitoba Municipal and Northern Relations · openA
- Roquette's New Pea Protein Plant Begins Contracting for Organic Yellow Peas — Roquette, via CNW/Newswire · openA
- Aerospace sector / Southport Aerospace Centre — Invest in Portage (Portage Regional Economic Development) and Southport Aerospace Centre Inc. · openA
- Manufacturing / Transportation sector — Invest in Portage (Portage Regional Economic Development) · openA
- The Manitoba Farm Industry Board and The Farm Lands Ownership Act (fact sheet) — Manitoba Agriculture · openA
- Agri-food sector — plant proteins — Invest in Portage (Portage Regional Economic Development) · openA
- Southport Aerospace Centre Inc. — home — Southport Aerospace Centre Inc. · openA