Saskatchewan’s rapidly growing cherry industry has spawned Saskatchewan’s first cherry processing company.
Prairie Fruit Processors Ltd. (PFP) opened for business last week in a leased facility just northeast of Saskatoon.
The company is jointly owned by nine cherry producers, who together invested about $90,000 in equipment for the plant.
“We had to get started on it this year because in a year or two we’re going to have a whole lot of cherries coming down the pike and we’ve got to be prepared,” said Tom Duggleby, manager of the Orchard at Ste. Therese in Bruno, Sask, and a director of PFP.
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With the number of trees now in the ground in Saskatchewan, cherry production this year is expected to be around 90,700 kilograms.
Within two years, that’s expected to increase to at least 450,000 kg, with continued growth after that.
The plant will have a pitting and processing capacity of around 450 kg an hour, or 3,600 kg a day.
Chantel Short, operations manager for PFP, said the plant will operate below capacity this year, as cool, windy weather through much of the growing season has limited production.
“I think within the next couple of years we’ll be much closer to capacity,” she said, adding it will likely be necessary to invest in a second pitting machine with two or three years.
The company hopes to own its own facility within a year or two.
“We decided to lease for this year in order to get things going,” she said. “We’ll try to buy a building for next year.”
Short said that until now, cherry growers in this area had to take their product to the pitting machine at the University of Saskatchewan.
That involved considerable time and expense because each producer had to take along employees to operate the equipment.
They also had to take the pitted cherries back to their own farms for packaging and marketing. PFP will provide packaging so the cherries will be ready to sell, whether at farmers’ markets, or to neighbours, bakers or restaurants.
“The marketing will be up to the individual producer,” said Short, although she added that might change.
“There might be a co-op option down the road, especially with the smaller orchards,” she said. “It might be beneficial for them to pool their cherries to get better contracts.”
Pitting is the key service that PFP provides.
The cherries are refrigerated, dumped into a rotating barrel-like structure, and roll into cherry-sized holes on the side of the barrel.
They are moved up to the top of the machine, where a pencil-sized pitter pokes the pits out through the holes.
The pits are blown away, and the cherries then roll onto a processing line, where they end up in a large tank of cold, slightly chlorinated water for cleaning, sizing and packaging.
Currently, those cherries can only be sold within Saskatchewan. PFP is working to get approval from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency to allow for shipments farther afield. Key to achieving that is obtaining a quick-freeze machine, since CFIA rules require that the products leave the facility frozen.
In addition to serving the nine orchards that own the facility, PFP will offer its services for a fee to other cherry producers, along with growers of other fruit, like raspberries, strawberries, saskatoons, currants and haskaps.
Short said she expects there will eventually be four full-time employees, including her, and four part-time workers.
