Another valley packinghouse will be shut down before the next harvest season as part of a streamlining of tree fruit industry facilities.

The announcement was made by the Okanagan Tree Fruit Cooperative earlier in the week as part of mediated negotiations underway this past week between the company and Local 247 of the United Food and Commercial Workers’ Union, which represents packinghouse employees.

The Summerland plant employs about 80, mostly on a seasonal basis.

OTFC chief executive officer Gary Schieck estimated that fewer than 20 per cent of those work nearly full-time, but he said he hopes to use all the employees elsewhere in the valley, where double shifting will be needed to process the same volume of fruit.

With its downtown Summerland location, the plant is on high-value property, but it was built in the 1930s, and the community has grown up around it. “This is not the highest and best use for that property,” he said.

Schieck said currently apples and a few pears are packed at that plant, and there is both Controlled Atmosphere (CA) and regular storage there.

The plant is comparable in size to Kelowna, but it pre-grades fruit and it doesn’t have cherry or pear packing lines like Kelowna does.

As well as packing fruit from local growers, about 70 per cent is brought in from elsewhere in the valley to be packed.

However, some fruit, such as McIntosh apples, have had to be shipped to Kelowna anyway, so that they don’t have to be pre-graded, and so there’s less handling.

On the other hand, fruit was also sent from Kelowna to Summerland for packing, then back to Kelowna.

“It wasn’t efficient. We have under-utilized facilities,” explained Scheick.

The Summerland plant had the second lowest production output of the company’s facilities.

The OTFC is the result of an amalgamation of four valley cooperatives last year in an attempt to operate the industry on a more efficient basis to sell more successfully on competitive global markets.

“We looked at a lot of scenarios,” said Schieck. The Naramata packinghouse was closed last year.

Both facilities are located on valuable land, unlike Oliver, for instance, which is located in an industrial area, noted Schieck.

In the official closure announcement, Schieck pointed to a number of reasons for the industry changes, including declining revenue, consolidation of wholesalers and retailers, higher costs than competitors, increasing costs for additional regulations and the need for more efficient use of people and capital.

Consolidation is essential, he said.

More than $5 million in upgrades and repairs to the five remaining packing facilities were made this year by the company, and the storage at Summerland may continue in use for another year, said Schieck. However, the packing line will be shut down.

He would not comment on outstanding issues now in binding mediation with mediator Mark Atkinson, from the B.C. Labour Relations Board. He did not return calls by press deadline.

The union website reports that Atkinson informed both parties late Wednesday that he couldn’t see any benefit in the two sides having further discussions, so he said he would decide the outstanding issues.

The contract was up Aug. 31, but talks began in July between the two sides, and employees voted in favour of a strike in mid-July. Around 500 employees are involved, but most are employed seasonally.

Near the end of August the two sides agreed on conditions under which the union would not exercise its right to strike, and a mediator became involved, with the agreement that his decision would be binding if negotiations were unsuccessful at reaching a settlement.

jsteeves@kelownacapnews.com