IMC Salt uses three different manufacturing processes in producing its products. These large, modern facilities produce a variety of salts for which purity is essential, such as table salt, food processing salt, salt for animal feeds, and water softening salt. Sifto Canada Inc.'s operation in Amherst is the newest, most modern evaporation plant on the continent. The evaporation process is a modern and highly sophisticated method of salt production. In order to reach the salt deposits, a hole is drilled through the overlying soil and rocks.
Water is pumped in to dissolve the salt and brine is pumped out.
The brine is then evaporated in a series of large vessels called vacuum pans. As the water evaporates, salt settles and is removed as a slurry to a classifier tank where sulfates are removed. In the final phases, salt is passed to a filter-dryer and then on to a processing area. Believed to have originated with the people who lived along the shores of the Mediterranean and Red Seas, solar evaporation remains an effective method of producing salt. It is still done in much the same way as in ancient times, only on a much larger and more efficient scale.