This cherry sorting and packing technology and equipment is amazing.
The Italian-made Unitec Cherry Vision 3.0 line is fully automated and uses computerized optical sorters to choose and pack the best cherries for lucrative world-wide export.
Sandhu Fruit Farm in Summerland has one of these shiny stainless-steel, state-of-the-art Cherry Vision 3.0s and will share it with other Okanagan, Similkameen and Creston valley cherry growers this upcoming season.
The sharing comes about via a strategic partnership between BC Tree Fruit Cooperative and Sandhu Fruit Farm.
BC Tree Fruits packs and markets the apples, cherries, pears, peaches, nectarines, apricots, prunes, plums and table grapes of 250 local orchardists and grape growers.
However, BC Tree Fruits is consolidating all packing in Oliver and has closed packinghouses in Kelowna and Winfield.
That means it needs more options for its fruit growers.
And one of those options now is Sandhu Fruit Farm and its Cherry Vision 3.0 for coop member cherry growers who want to export their fruit.
As an independent grower and packer, Sandhu has been exporting cherries throughout North America, the Middle East and Asia for 14 years.
Now other cherry growers can get in on the action through shared volume and technology with Sandhu and the BC Tree Fruits deal.
"The opportunity for both organizations to utilize their collective strengths to maximize returns for cherry growers is exciting," said Sandhu Fruit Farm CEO Chanpreet Sandhu.
"The Unitec technology is second to none. Customers around the world are keenly aware of the quality cartons this technology generates, which has resulted in strong prices for fruit packed on this line."
That's right.
Pristine cherries sorted, packed, shipped and marketed by the Sandhu-BC Tree Fruits alliance will fetch premium prices across the globe.
"Our BC Tree Fruit Cooperative brand is extremely strong in Asia and this opportunity will maximize returns for our export growers," said BC Tree Fruits CEO Warren Sarafinchan.
"We look forward to a strong season as we pool our collective knowledge and resources to bring high quality BC cherries to the world."
BC cherries come onto the market in late June every year to much fanfare.
The fruit is domestic, yet exotic, and tastes so good that it's always eagerly anticipated and is accordingly premium priced.
In fact, cherries are considered the rising star in the Okanagan tree fruit galaxy.
Since 2015, cherry production in BC has increased 28% to 16,000 tons of fruit annually from 5,000 acres.
Whereas apples, which are still king by volume at 110,000 tons annually from 6,700 acres, have seen an 8% decrease in yield and acreage since 2015 and have a hard time fetching prices high enough to cover cost of production.
Fun fact, while BC is a small, niche player on the cherry world stage (coming in at No. 24), Turkey is the biggest cherry producing country on the planet with 914,218 tons annually, way more than BC's 16,000 per year.
Italy ranks No. 10 in the world with 104,380 tons annually, a hefty volume and indication why the Unitec Cherry Vision 3.0 was developed and is manufactured in Italy.
By the way, the other countries in the top 10 are the US, Russia, Iran, Uzbekistan, Chile, Ukraine, Poland and Serbia.
