Maple Leaf Foods has received $4.5 million from the federal government for upgrades to its Brandon hog processing plant.

Manitoba MPs Vic Toews and Merv Tweed announced the funding on Friday.

"This will make the plant more energy efficient, in terms of better heat recovery systems, improved production process, and it will help us in food safety areas," explains Maple Leafs Chief Strategy Officer Doug Dodds.

"Most of the upgrades will be in the exhaust systems for the environmental heat recovery systems," he explains. "These are investments that continue to make our plant more competitive, innovative and certainly, they have long term paybacks to them."

The Brandon plant processes 85,000 hogs per week and employs around 2,300 people.

"The plant has the capacity to increase the number of hogs we process at the plant. If we're able to get increases in hog production in Manitoba and grow that population on a responsible basis, then we'll be able to expand the production and jobs that we have in Brandon," says Dodds.