Meeting the Export Demand for Perfect Blueberries
RJT Owner Tina Chow and her little dog.
By Ronda Payne Freeze-dried blueberries and a range of other products put RJT Blueberry Park in the spotlight locally and around the world. Getting blueberries to the other side of the globe is problematic. Buyers around the world love big, luscious, flavourful BC blueberries, but they also want them to be consistently perfect. Customers in the UK, Japan, Canada, the US and Hong Kong all demand the freshest, most perfect blueberries, according to Frederick Lee, sales manager with RJT Blueberry Park in Aldergrove. Lee says RJT doesn’t use anything but Grade A blueberries in their lines. Any B or C grade berries are sold off. “It’s our raw materials,” he says of the A grade and why standards are set so high for the berries the company uses for all its products. But this isn’t just about growing and selling blueberries. RJT’s owner, Tina Chow is passionate about offering the best blueberries, in a variety of forms, to the company’s customers. With cold storage, IQF and other equipment on RJT’s two sites, Chow con
" I want to ship a 100% natural product to other countries to show them how good it is." - Tina Chow trols the process as much as possible to ensure the best end-product – no matter what that product is. This philosophy led to the growth of the company’s expanding freeze-dried blueberry line. It requires a massive investment in equipment and a new facility to hold it all, but everything really begins in the field. More than half of Chow’s 80-acre site is planted with a mix of Duke, Reca and Elliot varieties. It was formerly an equestrian farm and while Chow has horses she saw the benefits of starting a new business when she began growing the berries in 2007. She quickly learned the downside of blueberry farming; she couldn’t control the price and payment to growers is not very fast. “Even selling frozen fruit, you can’t control [the price],” Lee explains. “So Tina wanted to make products.” The first generation of products were
dried blueberries and blueberry jam. Things were going well, more new products were added and the need for expansion took hold. Chow built cold storage on the farm in 2012 and soon RJT was bringing in blueberries from other local farmers. “We give them our [growing] standard via a contract,” notes Lee. “We only use BC blueberries. We have to measure the size and sweetness.” Innovation 2017 33