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/526329
Turkey 480,000 metric tonnes B.C. 14,000 metric tonnes (CHERyl HAMPSON) GRANT ROBINSON prevention. They're also expert at producing the sort of firm, red fruit that make consumers' mouths water. Local cherry growers say the work carried out in Summerland will give them an advantage in the lucrative Chinese market—which, according to federal officials, could lead to a 50-per-cent boost to B.C.'s annual export numbers. China, with its 1.4 billion consum- ers, is the largest export market for any producer, but until federal agriculture minister Gerry Ritz signed an agreement last Novem- ber giving Canada direct access to the country, the only Canadian cherries the Chinese could buy were on the black market. Fol- lowing trial exports in 2013 and 2014, this will be the first year the market is fully open. Already demand is outstrip- ping supply in China, where a pound of cherries that fetches $2 to $4 in B.C. is worth $10 a pound. "We have a line-up of people wanting to buy our product," says Sukhpaul Bal, president of the B.C. Cherry Association, whose grandfather founded Valley Orchards in Kelowna more than a century ago. "I've got a guy coming from Shanghai who wants to meet with me, and I've told him up front that I don't have product for him because I've got existing buyers, and he still wants to meet." Bal travelled to China last fall and was astounded by how coveted Canadian cherries are—although flavour was not the most important trait. "Taste actually comes after the colour and firmness," Bal says. "The colour of the stem has to be green, which signifies freshness." • seeing red Waste Watchers N u m e r o l o g y by Melissa Edwards Additional levy, on top of standard garbage tipping fees, that commercial waste haulers (used by Metro Vancouver businesses) will have to pay as of July if their loads contain more than 25 per cent food scraps—the next step in the region's "training period" for its new zero-organics rule. Since the ban came into effect in January, grocers and commercial kitchens and their haulers have had a six-month grace period to find new homes for those collective tonnes of butternut squash peels and uneaten yam fries—and so far, it seems, they've been largely successful. "There's been a significant drop— the vast majority are keeping under 25 per cent," says Andrew Marr, head of solid waste planning for Metro Vancouver. And when the threshold drops to 10 per cent next year? "That may be a different story," says Marr. WORlD leADeRs Researcher Cheryl Hampson says B.C. cherries are grown globally JUly 2015 BCBusiness 25 50% B.C. and Canada are not even in the running when it comes to the largest cherry produc- ers in the world (annual produc- tion/2012) Share of pre- ban garbage sent to Metro Vancouver landfills that was compostable. 30,000 Tonnes of commercial food waste diverted from Nanaimo landfills since it became the first city in B.C. to implement a ban 10 years ago. 125,000 Annual tonnes of organic waste that will be turned into energy by the massive planned Surrey Biofuel Facility, which broke ground in April and will be operational by 2017. Iran 200,000 metric tonnes 40%