Despite its recent purchase of Yakama Juice in Selah, Wash., Kelowna, B.C.'s Sun Rype says it remains firmly committed to the region.
British Columbia's Okanagan Valley has long been synonymous with apple orchards, and for more than 60 years, Sun Rype has been a key player in the region, making juice and snacks out of the valley's luscious bounty.
But the Kelowna-based company's recent acquisition of a juice plant in nearby Washington State is stoking fears among the area's struggling orchardists that Sun Rype may abandon its Canadian operations - worries the company says are unfounded.
Sun Rype's announcement last week that it has bought Yakama Juice in Selah, Wash., "just came out of the blue for most of us," said orchard owner Joe Sardinha, also president of the B.C. Fruit Growers' Association.
Sun Rype already supplements the apples it buys from Okanagan farmers for processing at its Kelowna plant with fruit trucked from Washington. Mr. Sardinha said he worries that lower taxes and labour costs south of the border could one day prompt Sun Rype to close its Kelowna plant and move production completely to Selah.
Chief executive officer Dave McAnerney says his company remains firmly committed to the Okanagan.
"Our Kelowna plant produces the vast majority of our products, and it's ideally located to service our primary market, which is Western Canada," he said, adding that the Washington plant will enable Sun Rype to expand its presence in the U.S. market. "The fact that we've made this acquisition is a sign that we're growing and we need more capacity. It's a very good news story for Sun Rype."
Mr. McAnerney said Sun Rype has put lots of money into proprietary technology at its Kelowna plant "and recently approved another significant investment in the near future," although he declined to provide details for competitive reasons.
These are anxious times for Okanagan orchardists. Low returns have prompted many farmers to sell their orchards, while others have replaced apple trees with more lucrative crops such as wine grapes.
"The conversion of orchards to vineyards … has been for a decade, signalling the demise of orcharding as any kind of a dominant form of agriculture in the valley," said John Wagner, an anthropologist at UBC Okanagan who studies the culture of agriculture.
Profits for growers, such as they are, come from the sale of fresh apples in grocery stores and at fruit stands. But orchardists rely on Sun Rype to buy their "culls," or damaged fruit, for processing into juice.
The price orchardists get for cull fruit doesn't cover the costs of picking and sorting it, Mr. Sardinha said. But, he added, growers still need that money to help defray the expense of dealing with the damaged apples.
"If we don't have a home for that cull fruit, then the full freight for the overhead would apply … and that cull fruit, having no home, would end up in a landfill, and you pay for every ton of material you take to a landfill," he said.
The low returns for apple crops coupled with high land prices means it doesn't make economic sense to buy an orchard and continue growing apples on it, Mr. Wagner said. Most orchardists in the Okanagan are in their 50s and very few young people are going into the business.
"And so, in a single generation, we're probably going to see the number of orchardists in the valley really plummet," he said. "Returns are terrible, so the people who get into it now tend to be people with deep pockets who don't have to worry about the economics, or they're people who are willing to live off nothing because they love to do it."
Special to The Globe and Mail