With a mission to inform, empower, celebrate and advocate for British Columbia's current and aspiring business leaders, BCBusiness go behind the headlines and bring readers face to face with the key issues and people driving business in B.C.
Issue link: http://digital.canadawide.com/i/1490198
SOURCES: THE AGILITY EFFECT, TRANSLINK, SFU, VERNON MORNING STAR, CASCADE SKYLINE, DAILY HIVE, THE GONDOLA PROJECT, TECHNICAL SAFETY BC, FATZER AG, GUINNESS, TOURISM WHISTLER, GROUSE MOUNTAIN, VANCOUVER SUN G O F I G U R E Including ski resorts, there were 233 active passenger ropeways in B.C. in 2021 211 existing 22 newly installed 14% increase from 2020 53,697 kg Total weight of the 4.75- km replacement cable for Squamish's Sea to Sky Gondola that was shipped from Switzerland (again) after the gondola was vandalized (again) in September 2020 The gondola's builder, Fatzer AG, was able to manufacture, ship and deliver the new cable in a record 3 months Whistler's Peak2Peak ropeway still holds the record for the highest point above the ground reached by a gondola, at 436 metres CAPACITY: 4,100 passengers/hour LENGTH: 4.4 km (3 km unsupported) RIDE TIME: 11 minutes By combining Peak2Peak with the Whistler and Blackcomb mountain gondolas, a sightseer can ride a total of 13.5 km in the air At 57 years old, Grouse Mountain's "Blue Line" tram— currently used only for supply transport and set to be replaced by next year—is one of B.C.'s oldest operating aerial tramways Expected cost of the new gondola project: $35 million GO FIGURE, TOP TO BOTTOM: PAUL BRIDE/SEA TO SKY GONDOLA; DESTINATION BC/BLAKE JORGENSON; DESTINATION VANCOUVER/DEVIN MANKY JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2023 BCBUSINESS.CA 17 Trailer Trash Burnaby's Trendi Tech is cycling up its mission to automate food rescue by Rushmila Rahman T E C H NOL O G Y "A s consumers, we don't ever see the food that's wasted at the farm level," says Carissa Campeotto, co-founder and CMO at Burnaby-based robotics company Trendi Tech. A year after incorporating her busi- ness of upcycling misfit fruits and vegetables into shelf-stable products in 2019, she trav- elled 6,000 kilometres across the prairies with co-founder and CEO Craig McIntosh to take stock of how much fresh produce goes into the bin at Canadian farms. Their findings? Around 800 pounds every 10 minutes. At the time, both Campeotto and McIntosh were on a $3/ day food budget. In wanting to automate food rescue, they recruited Surrey-based manu- facturer Apollo Custom Manu- facturing to help fabricate and assemble a mobile food proces- sor in Vancouver. In order to build the BioTrim processor, Apollo converted a shipping container to meet Trendi's specifications, which asked for a unit that could be dropped onto a commercial transport trailer. Apollo in- corporated Trendi's cleaning and freeze-drying technology (which retains 97 percent of the nutrients, according to Campeotto) into the unit to al- low it to dry and grind batches over a 24-hour cycle. The result is what Trendi calls BioFlakes— a powder that's a tenth of the food's original size and weight, and that's fit for both human and animal consumption. By setting high standards for fruit and vegetables, gro- cery stores in Canada often reject what farmers bring to the table. And that burden becomes heavy when a farmer doesn't have the manpower to resell the misfits. As Campeotto puts it, the grocery community is comfortable with a wasteful buying strategy. "On aver- age, grocery stores are buying 20 percent more than they need so their shelves don't look empty," she says. Depending on the size of the BioTrim unit, the technology can process anywhere from 300 to thousands of kilograms of food per day. Trendi is try- ing to create the opportunity for farmers to resell otherwise wasted food and for companies to be more sustainable about their products. "I've gone to many differ- ent conferences this year for agriculture and the number one leading conversation in every agriculture community is mental health at the farm level," Campeotto adds. "We think our food system is deli- cate right now. We think the cost of our food is expensive today. But what will it be in two to three years when more and more farms are closing down and nobody wants to do that work or take that risk?" For Trendi, nipping waste in the bud means prioritizing farmers and producers. Its intention with BioTrim is to build macro facilities in agri- cultural superclusters in B.C. (and beyond) that can process community-level waste instead of each farmer buying a unit themselves. Permanent units are already set to launch in Ecuador this year. Trendi has raised some $10 million since 2021 in its mis- sion to stabilize the risks and challenges within our current food system. It rescued over 120,000 kilograms of "mis- fit" puree in an earlier project that deployed smoothie vending machines at YVR and other loca- tions throughout B.C. The impact of transforming a low-value commodity that nobody wants into high-value goods trickles down to the bot- tom line. "We're able to get this product at low value, make a partnership with a producer and then share profits togeth- er," says Campeotto. "We're providing affordable food with the highest nutrient value, and that's the goal." £ WASTE AWAY Trendi recruited metal fabrica- tor Apollo to build a mobile food processor in B.C.