BCBusiness

ohn Anderson started his career at the Oppen- heimer Group in gumboots, shovelling ice o a railcar full of cab- bage. It was 1975, and the teenager aspired to become an airline pilot. He had earned his commercial pilot's licence already but took what he intended to be a temporary warehouse job at the fruit-and-vegetable distributor. Anderson quickly moved up the ranks through sales and operations. Forty years later, the 59-year-old father of two no longer hauls 100-pound sacks of potatoes. He owns 65 per cent of the company and is its chair, president and CEO. The Oppenheimer Group, rebranded in 2012 as Oppy, was founded as a supplier of provisions to gold-rush miners in 1858 by four brothers including Vancou- ver's second mayor, David Oppenheimer. While it is the province's oldest existing company, it's no museum relic. The amount of produce it handles has tripled since Anderson took over as CEO in 1993. Revenue has grown a hundred-fold from the roughly $7 million per year that "owed into the o"ce when Anderson joined in the 1970s. Oppy now oversees a sophisticated supply chain that links some 4,500 grow- ers and 1,100 customers across the globe, constantly shifting to stay ahead of seasonal changes, political con"icts, weather disrup- tions and economic crises. "There's a huge amount of volatility in what we do," says Anderson. Few busi- nesses are as exposed to worldwide events as much as Oppy. The drought in Califor- nia forced berry production to shift to Mexico. A change to Chilean labour laws cre- ated a worker shortage for the country's grape harvest. The company needs to watch over how such events aect more than 100 dierent globally dispersed products. Mandarins, cucumbers and kiwis will all go to rot if the logistics aren't seamless. Oppy's 12 o"ces throughout the Americas and its world- wide network of suppliers give Anderson better sources for news than CNN. ("I could tell you they are getting a lot more snow down in the southern part of New Zealand than they have in over 30 years, and they had a major snowstorm just north of Santiago, Chile, yester- day," he says.) Managing a company through such volatility requires more than simply "ipping a switch when one sector goes awry. Anderson has cultivated relationships with his partner growers—at times supporting them with pre-season ¡nancing to help them through tough condi- tions. It's a benevolent act that also secures supply and mitigates the company's exposure to risk. Over the decades, the company has also introduced new varieties of fruits and vegetables to the North American market (like gold kiwifruits and the Jazz apple) and stayed on top of consumer trends by provid- ing a growing selection of organic and fair-trade- certi¡ed products. While being the high- "ying CEO of Oppenheimer Group remains a full-time job, Anderson continues to make time for his passion for aviation. In 1980, he founded his own charter and cor- porate airline, Anderson Air, to serve the executive travel market. In the early days, Anderson hardly slept, "ying medevac gigs in the middle of the night and returning to the Oppenheimer o"ces the next day. Today, the ¡rm "ies four jets and Anderson continues to serve as its president, CEO and majority shareholder, in addition to his duties running Oppy. You won't ¡nd Ander- son at the controls of his planes anymore. He's one of his airline's most fre- quent "iers, but he leaves the "ying to sta pilots and the day-to-day running of the company to his 33-year-old son, Ryan Anderson, who serves as its vice-president. John Anderson has stew- arded the Oppenheimer brothers' legacy and taken the company they formed to new heights. Meanwhile, he's leaving his own legacy for his family to follow. —Dee Hon E O Y F o o d + B e v e r a g e D i s t r i b u t i o n J 36 BCBusiness OCTOBER 2015 T H E J U D G E S S A Y W I N N E R J O H N A N D E R S O N [ CHAIR, PRESIDENT AND CEO, THE O PPENHEIM ER GROUP ] P A C I F I C R E G I O N O V E R A L L W I N N E R " Even though Oppenheimer celebrates more than 150 years in operation, John and his company continue to evolve and show us how businesses can and should be run"

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