Canada's greenhouse production expanding

Rindi Bristol, senior director of Whole Leaf, has been with the company since before it even had a greenhouse, as its initial six acres of high-tech lettuce greenhouses have been in operation for about three years and its expansion of five acres is coming up on its first anniversary this May.

"With a brand-new product and something that's really new to the market, plus the fact that you're trying to be a disrupter in a category that has a lot of history, such as the lettuce category, and you're going up against giants of the industry — California and Arizona field growers — success comes from a lot of persistence," she said.

"It takes a lot of ingenuity, innovation and a lot of patience."

Thanks to the additional five acres, business at Whole Leaf was super-strong in 2019.

"Just as we were dipping our toe with the initial acreage, we went full-speed ahead with the additional acreage because of what's happening in the cannabis industry and our ability to expand would have to be put on hold because so many builders had contracts to build those greenhouses," Bristol said.

"We looked at how the market was going and how consumers were looking at food safety within the lettuce category, so we thought we should expand sooner rather than later."

It was a decision that everyone at the company was glad it made, as the E. coli scare in lettuce last November drove customers towards greenhouse-grown lettuce and Whole Leaf's product.

"We offer something that no human has touched until right at harvest where they do a quick quality check on the product," Bristol said. "We offer the ability to grow one head of lettuce just from a liter and a half of water, where as opposed to the field where you may need up to 180 liters of water to grow one head."

The water is clean, treated and everything is automated right up until harvest. That means what Whole Leaf can grow in 11 acres of space compared to what is needed in the field is a huge difference.

"What is unique about Whole Leaf is that we're the first facility that has these five technologies brought together working altogether to bring a great high-quality product to market," Bristol said. "There are lots of greenhouse growers in North America, but you can tell the difference between what our facility can grow as opposed to greenhouses converted from other products. This was built for lettuce only."

The company's retail partners are happy as well, as they have enough product in the produce aisle to appease customers.

"We've set a high bar for quality in the greenhouse-grown industry and we're going to work to maintain that quality and push our greenhouse to see what kind of production we can realize in 2020," Bristol said.

The BC Hothouse division of the Star Group is currently growing over 107 hectors of tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, eggplant and specialties. The company exports throughout North America.

"All of our production is high-tech greenhouse. The growth I have seen has been exponential," said Matt Bates, vice president of sales for BC Hothouse. "We know lettuce has been a game changer, but we continue to see that with tomatoes and peppers and others as well."

Source: The Produce News