“Without immediate assistance, there will be no tree fruit industry to save.”
–BC Tree Fruits Association
It wasn’t even six months ago that the BC Tree Fruits cooperative ushered local politicians and the media into its newly updated and expanded sorting and packing facility in Oliver.
At a cost of $60 million, it was an ultra high-tech addition to a plant that dated back to the Second World War. Robotic arms placed test apples on cardboard trays (red side up, to appeal to Asian markets) and then stacked the boxes into towers. Bins flew along automated conveyor belts. Cameras took photographs of the passing fruit, flipping them into different channels based on their sizes, colours and condition. A live stream was available for farmers to watch their crop make its way through the sorting and packing process.
This, BC Tree Fruits officials said at the time, was the future of British Columbia agriculture.
Now, maybe not.
Six months later, the Oliver packing facility sits shuttered, caught up in the court proceedings that have toppled the cooperative and stranded hundreds of farmers without packing, sorting or cold storage.
“There’s a lot of shock in the whole area,” said Rick Knodel, Oliver’s director for the Regional District of Okanagan-Similkameen, who toured the plant in February.
“It’s been the lifeblood of the whole South Okanagan for pretty much all my life.”
The new facility did manage to put through this year’s somewhat-limited B.C. cherry crop, said Knodel, and acquitted itself very well. But now its 100 employees are out of work, abruptly, just a week or two before the B.C. apple crop begins.
“The biggest concern with growers, they are standing there with prunes, pears and apples and nowhere to market it,” said Knodel.
“BC Tree Fruits was a lot larger – the reports don’t do it justice. All the independents (packers) together in the Okanagan cannot handle one-third of what BC Tree Fruits was handling, and that’s if they did away with their customers.”
Backbone of tree fruit industry in limbo
The tree fruit cooperative has three packing facilities and six receiving facilities. Apples, cherries, peaches, nectarines, plums, prunes and apricots are packed in Oliver; sweet cherries are packed in Kelowna; plus a facility in Winfield that handles apples as well.
Critically, there are three cold atmospheric storage facilities, where cold and nitrogen are controlled to preserve fruits for sale in the winter and later months.
All those — the backbone of B.C.’s tree fruit packing and storage industry — are in limbo, as the cooperative looks to sell assets in a court-controlled creditor process.
The fear is that facilities such as the one in Oliver get bought up by those looking to make a quick buck on the metal inside, or the land.
“My fear here is they get an unscrupulous purchaser and the intent would never be to start the business up or keep it running, which is necessary for this area,” said Knodel.
“We are in deep doo-doo without [a business] of that magnitude.”
Opposition tells BC government to bail out co-op
The Opposition BC United party has called on government to halt the court proceedings and bail out the cooperative for one year.
“We’ve called for a complete intervention, so that no receiver can go in there and sell off any of the high tech equipment in its packing plant,” said BC United agriculture critic Ian Paton, who has visited the Okanagan and kept in close contact with frustrated farmers, and earlier this year visited the Oliver plant as well.
“This is a big deal. It’s a real shame if government is going to watch our tree fruit industry go down the tube.”
“It’s a real shame if government is going to watch our tree fruit industry go down the tube.”
Ian Paton
It’s a call BC Conservative leader John Rustad has echoed.
“Probably half the fruit growers, and especially the smaller ones, really rely on the cooperative and if they’ve got no way to market their product they will go bankrupt. They won’t survive. And it would be very disastrous.”
The BC NDP government, which has been slow off the mark to intervene, and only recently created a working group on the issue, says its hands are tied.
“The Co-op board’s decision has triggered a process that will be overseen by the courts,” the Ministry of Agriculture said in a statement.
“The Province doesn’t have unilateral powers to interrupt or supercede that process but is committed to do everything we can to ensure that the interests of growers are considered in that process. Our immediate focus is on helping growers get their fruit to market.”
Critics say that’s hard to swallow given the province had members in and around the cooperative who watched it tilt into collapse, and did nothing while it would still have been possible to intervene.
The BC Fruit Growers’ Association met with Premier David Eby’s chief of staff Matt Smith, and Agriculture Minister Pam Alexis, on Wednesday, to present a series of suggestions for help.
In a statement, the association called the meeting “productive.”
“We are hopeful that our concerns and suggestions have been heard as the industry faces this crisis,” it said.
“Without immediate assistance, there will be no tree fruit industry to save.”
Eby, who has been on holidays the past two weeks, is expected to address the issue next week.
‘They’ve got nowhere to send their apples’
The province will have to intervene in some way, because private packers won’t be able to handle the full demand of B.C. apple season, said Paton.
“I’ve talked to so many fruit growers up there and they’ve got nowhere to send their apples,” he said.
“If somebody doesn’t jump in from government and get that building back up, hire the employees back and get it up and running… these guys say the apples will rot on the tree or fall on the ground.
“They don’t know what to do with them. There’s 300 growers in the Okanagan of which 250 depend on the co-op to ship their fruit to.”
“It’s been the lifeblood of the whole South Okanagan for pretty much all my life.”
Rick Knodel
Locals want answers as to how the cooperative board abruptly made the decision to seek court protection, without discussion amongst members, said Knodel. It’s especially frustrating with the new machinery in Oliver sitting there ready for its first crop of B.C. apples.
“It’s left a lot of question marks,” he said.
“The growers here that are members are questioning how they could do this without ever asking their permission? They are the ones who end up the carrying the debt at the end of the day.”
Meanwhile, the high-tech, renovated, packing facility that was once the pride of Oliver, sits idle.
“They’ve got a terrific among of money invested at this point,” said Knodel.
“A lot of us are sitting here with our fingers crossed hoping a reputable agency will step forward and purchase the building.”