Buyer's Notes - November 19, 2021

Buyer’s Notes - November 19, 2021

Randy Hooper - Discovery Organics

What to say?  So much has happened in the past week and all of us in the essential food industry, from farmer to restaurant have suffered.  There won’t be any updates today regarding produce except to say that we are all working to shunt produce to everyone as fast as possible.  We know this process of re-stocking and establishing new trucking lanes is going to be arduous for most of our customers outside Greater Vancouver and Vancouver Island going forward.

Of course, in our industry, the biggest story is the loss of the two largest main highways through SW BC, neither of which, outside a herculean effort, will be open before mid-2022 – there is just too much sustained damage with multiple bridges lost on the Coquihalla, plus one long section of southbound lanes that the river tore out.

I can’t even figure out how they are going to fix Hwy 1 through the Fraser without building a long span bridge.

The produce industry is working closely with the US authorities, allowing sealed trucks to transit through Washington and beyond, crossing back into Canada through the Okanagan, and several other crossings.  We’re hoping that will help, but the paperwork requirements are, at this point, overwhelming and nearly impossible.

We are more than lucky that our new Calgary warehouse is up and running as of this weekend, and we have many trucks aimed there with first arrivals this weekend.  We will be serving as many customers as possible, through the Okanagan, Shuswap and Alberta east from there, starting with a pretty basic selection to start, but building inventory levels and a wider range of product over the next couple of weeks, while also hunting for delivery options to other Interior locations we haven’t nailed down yet.

The truck corridor now open connecting Vancouver to Calgary will certainly help, despite adding 6 – 7 hours of clock time, stretching this to a 2 day trip, and trying to accommodate trucks and people returning home to the Interior is going to be ugly.  Most of the current route that is open (Hwy 7 to Hope, Hwy 3 to Princeton, Hwy 5A to Merritt, before re-joining the northern section of the Coquihalla to Kamloops) is made up of older single lane highways most of the way. 

As for the produce world, every product and every market is amazingly stable – the buyers wouldn’t have much to write about today.  We did receive our first load from Ecocampos today and the product is perfect, if not vibrant. 

Hang in there!