Cherry business under local control
By Lorne Eckersley
Creston Valley Advance
After five years as the Creston Valley’s largest cherry packing and export business, Cherries Kokanee is now entirely locally owned. Company founder Bill Truscott (and wife, Barb) has bought out investing partners and sold half of the newly named BFC Growers to longtime fruit growers Frank and Barb Wloka.
“We’ve always got along really well,” Truscott said last week. “Frank has a tremendous amount of expertise, both as a grower and from his work on production lines. Sometimes we’re like two peas in a pod.”
Wloka retired last year from a career in the brewing industry. He spent several years in Russia and the Ukraine working for the parent company of Columbia Brewery. There he was charged with bringing the company’s brewery production lines up to modern standards. Even when he and his family were living abroad, he continued to own and manage his local orchards.
“The industry and markets are always changing, and you have to keep up to survive,” Wloka said. “We’re making the necessary changes.”
One result of the ownership change is a quarter-million-dollar investment to upgrade the Erickson packing plant. A new approach to packing cherries and consultation with employees led to the changes.
“We held a two-day retreat with all our key people in March,” Wloka said. “We got feedback and evaluation after looking at the benefits and drawbacks of each particular area of the plant. Based on those recommendations we’re making a $250,000 capital investment.”
Truscott said the planning session results were divided into “must-haves, need-to-haves and like-to-haves.”
“We’re doing all of the musts, almost all of the needs and some of the likes,” he said. “The net result will mainly be in the gentler handling of fruit.”
“The packing line will be more employee-friendly,” Wloka added. “We’re removing unnecessary inefficiencies — that’s a fundamental need in any operation. Happy employees on the line will allow us to meet our efficiency and productivity targets.”
Changes to the plant will be complete in time for what is expected to be a below average cherry crop with above average prices.
Frost damage in France, Germany, Turkey, Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Utah has devastated late season cherry crops in those competitive areas. That means that Creston Valley crops, if weather cooperates through harvest, will be in high demand worldwide.
“We had some frost damage to our Lapins (the earliest of the late season cherries to ripen) but our Sweethearts and Staccatos look absolutely beautiful,” Truscott said.
This year’s crop is small compared to last year’s huge harvest — he estimates BFC Growers will process 1.4 million pounds this year compared to 1.8 million pounds in 2007 — but high market prices should compensate for the lower production and the low U.S. dollar, “barring things we have no control over,” Wloka added, “like rain.”
He said the main difference in this year’s crop is that more culling will be required as the fruit is inspected for quality.
“We could have a cull rate of twelve to eighteen per cent in some blocks,” he estimated. “If we escape other weather-related impacts, it will still make it a very nice crop overall.”
The fatal helicopter crash of a helicopter in Cranbrook this spring is expected to force changes in cherry orchards this summer. Until regulations are re-examined, helicopters might not be available to blow rain from cherry trees. The result will be a greater need for spraying from tractors.
“We hope our neighbours will be understanding,” Wloka said, explaining that wet weather could force the use of tractor spraying through the night, while helicopters previously would have accomplished the task early in the morning, and much more quickly.
What kind of impact does the cherry harvest have on the local economy?
Truscott estimates that as many as 200 employees will work to sort and pack the cherries in two shifts. Another 300 pickers will be in the fields of the orchardists who use BFC Growers to process their crops. Total wages for those workers could hit $1 million.
Among the biggest changes this year will see growers who pack at BFC choose their own marketers.
“We used to contract with a single marketer,” Truscott said. “BFC will only be responsible for packing the fruit and growers will contract with the brokers.”
Another change will see much of the fruit packed directly into one- and two-pound bags. Previously, all cherries were shipped in boxes.
Truscott is also excited that a new, late ripening cherry tree is now being added to the local mix of varieties. He received a U.S. patent this spring for a Kootenay cherry tree, which arose from a single tree in his orchard.
“That tree was always flagged,” he said, meaning its fruit wasn’t ready for harvest at the same time as the others in the orchard.
“Then I’d check it a few weeks after harvest and it would be full of large, firm fruit,” he said.
Several years of work with the tree’s offspring has led to a patent which adds yet another late variety to the Creston Valley arsenal.
In the ever-increasing demands in the global market, Truscott believes Creston-area growers have been leaders. Many have worked to become certified under the EurepGap program that was required to allow exports to European Community countries. Now referred to as GlobalGap, the program is a closely audited set of standards that starts in the orchard, controlling such things as the use of chemicals and their storage, responsible use of water and an astonishing array of farming practises.
Export markets now demand that each cherry sold can be traced back to its source, in case illness arises among consumers. With Creston Valley cherries now turning up on grocery store shelves in Europe, the United States and Asia, the pressure to meet world standards has been met head-on, Truscott said.
Thirteen of the 40 GlobalGap-certified B.C. growers are in the Creston area, and BC has more certified growers than in the entire US.
“We were the first in North America,” Truscott said. “We’re a leader in food safety programs.”
The late season cherry harvest will start in early August, about 10 days later than last year. It will be a long three weeks until then, as cherry growers can only watch and wait, responding to weather conditions that are beyond their control.
