WINFIELD — After being battered by storms and hail, Okanagan fruit growers finally got some good news on two fronts this week.
The packinghouse in Winfield now houses a brand new, fully automatic packing line machine worth nearly $2 million.
The federal and provincial governments are contributing $700,000.
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Officials with BC Tree Fruits say this new machine will make them more competitive by pumping out higher quality fruit.
“This machine eliminates a lot of the costs of sorting out apples. It’s done mechanically, optically, which ever word you want to use,” says BC Tree Fruit CEO, Alan Tyabji. “So this machine does that. The end result is a softer gentler delivery of apples. So we get cleaner apples coming to the packinghouse.”
The other good news is that apple growers are seeing record prices this year. They’re getting a 25 cents a pound.
And cherry growers are also seeing record returns this season.
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