Ground has officially been broken for a major expansion of the BC Tree Fruits (BCTF) packing facility in Oliver, B.C. It has faced some controversy over the past year.
BCTF members and local officials, including MLA for Boundary Similkameen Roly Russell, and Member of Parliament for the South Okanagan and West Kootenay Richard Cannings, gathered on Wednesday for the official ceremony.
“Fruit growers, especially apples growers have always had to be innovative, stay on top of things with dense plantings, new varieties, things like that and this is just another step,” said Cannings.
The Mayor of Oliver, Martin Johansen, added that the expansion will have a major impact on the local economy.
“This investment is going to strengthen our economy and create jobs for residents,” said Johansen. “I think the most important thing is it’s going to serve to ensure the future viability and success of the cooperative and I think that’s really what this is all about,” said Johansen.
Last year a number of Okanagan Farmers gathered in protest of BCTF’s decision to shut down packing house operations in the Central Okanagan and move them to Oliver.
A special general meeting was then called by members unhappy with the direction of the cooperative. However, none of the special resolutions, including those that could have unseated the current board, passed.
“We’ve got about 300 growers, so it would be very difficult when you’ve got growers from all over the Okanagan, Creston valleys to make a decision that everyone is going to agree on,” said BC Tree Fruits president, Warren Sarafinchan.
“Our goal was to make decisions that are in the best interests of all of our growers, number one. But number two, we continue to talk to our growers on a regular basis, to get their ideas, to get their comments and feedback and we’re going to continue to do that so well into the future.”
According to the co-op, of their over 300 members, 70 per cent of the apples that they process are grown in the North Okanagan, and 30 per cent in the South.
Fruit will be moving from the north to the south but “those costs have been built into the analysis.”
“We’re comfortable that factoring all of that in, this will still be the best decision for the corporative,” said Sarafinchan. “We also have a large cherry business. We have a stone fruit business and those are big commodities in the South Okanagan. Again, we had to look at it holistically, apples are a big part of our business, but they’re not the only part of it.”
Sarafinchan went on to say that the decision to invest in Oliver came down to economically, what was going to be in the best interest of their growers.
“We already had a large footprint in Oliver,” he said. “We also had some very good, new, recently invested in equipment – and felt that making further investments in the area of Oliver was in the best interest of everyone.”
Meanwhile, improvements to the facility include state-of-the-art technology that is anticipated to make it one of the most efficient packing houses in the industry.
In addition, the BC Tree Fruits plant size will almost double with new robotics, packaging, and grading equipment, increased storage capacity, and health and safety standards.
“I think the most substantial improvement has to be the grading technology. Today when we grade, we can look at the outside of the apple, tomorrow we will be able to look at both the outside and the inside of the apple,” said Sarafinchan. “When we sell products to customers, either North America or globally, we will have very high confidence in the quality of the fruit that we’re sending them.”
The upgrades will take around two years however, for the 2024 crops, the cooperative is expecting to have a good part of the work already done.
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