Berryhill building in Chilliwack


New facility will expand the company’s blueberry processing capacity, with cold storage plant to be first stage.


By Grant Ullyot B


erryhill Foods Inc. has unveiled a plan to construct a 35,000 square-foot processing plant for raspberry and blueberry producers to be built on a site in the new Kerr Road industrial park in Chilliwack. The plant will be a second facility for Berryhill, whose other one is located in Abbotsford.


In Chilliwack, it is the second berry processing plant to be built. The first, for the now-defunct East Chilliwack Agricultural Co-op, was developed back in the mid-1980s and today houses the operations of Cam Tran Pacific, a firm that builds and refurbishes electrical transformers for BC Hydro. Berryhill Foods was established in 1994 when Bill Whaley (now retired) was manager of the former Abbotsford Blueberry Co-op when it shut down. He mustered a number of investor- shareholders and built a new plant in Abbotsford called Berryhill Foods Inc. Today it is a state-of-the-art facility processing, freezing, marketing and distributing cultivated raspberries and blueberries which are marketed world- wide.


Berryhill’s premium berry varieties are grown by carefully selected producers in the Fraser Valley. Berryhill general manager Tom Philips says the company intends to expand its list of producers in the Chilliwack-Agassiz area once the new Chilliwack plant is up and operating, hopefully in time for the 2016 crop year. The first stage of construction will be a cold storage plant with the capacity of up to five million pounds of blueberries. The second stage will be the construction of the processing plant. The berry processing industry during the last few years has adopted a new process that freezes blueberries instantly at the rate of 10 to 12 thousand


of that production occurring in the Fraser Valley.


Data collected in 2013 shows that Chilliwack has more than 1,000 acres of land in blueberry production, with the number of growers and production still increasing.


“Food processing is an important part of a strong agricultural economy and we are pleased to see this new investment in Chilliwack,” said Chilliwack mayor, Sharon Gaetz when the project was announced. “Berryhill has a great reputation and will bring many jobs to our community.”


Several years ago hundreds of full-time and seasonal jobs were lost when Fraser Valley Foods closed its Chilliwack processing plant. When the


Abbotsford Growers Co-


pounds each hour. The processed berry comes out of the machine rock solid and can be packed and stored for a long time. When thawed it tastes like a fresh- picked berry retaining all of its fresh picked qualities.


This process will back up future fresh market global exports as they are expanded. However, the industry is currently focused on supplying fresh blueberries to China, which has opened its borders to imports from BC. China is already a well-established market for Canadian grown and processed blueberry fruit wines. The blueberry industry in North America has expanded to production levels totaling more than a billion pounds. British Columbia is the largest producer of cultivated blueberries in North America, with production in excess of 150 million pounds. Growth is expected to reach 200 million pounds in the near future, with about 95 per cent


op ceased operations last year, Berryhill, together with other processing firms around the valley collectively took in the many displaced producers who shipped their berries to the Co-op. This assured producers, mainly in the Abbotsford- Langley areas, that their raspberries and blueberries would continue to be processed and marketed locally. The mayor noted that Chilliwack’s Economic Development Partners Corporation, which has been instrumental in bringing major economic development to the community, also worked closely with Berryhill to bring it to Chilliwack. “To the credit of former chair John Jansen and current chair Brian Coombes, CEPCO continues to enhance Chilliwack’s industrial footprint,” said Gaetz.


The new Berryhill plant will create an estimated 20 jobs, most of them in the quick freeze operations.


British Columbia Berry Grower • Spring 2016 17


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