Apr 7, 2007
Company Building Baby Carrot Toehold in Ontario

While there’s plenty of challenge in growing and packaging baby carrots in Ontario, success for the five Streef brothers hinges on their ability to compete with imports.

“When you walk into a grocery store, there’s just about anything you can imagine available from anywhere in the world. It just wasn’t like that 20 year ago,” Albert Streef said.

California dominates baby carrots in North America. The two biggest players in the state – Bolthouse Farms and Grimmway Farms – each have plant investments running into the tens of millions and are set up to produce carrots year round, Streef said.

The big companies don’t want slowdowns caused by competition from such seasonal, carrot-growing areas as Ontario. That’s why deals are struck to supply buyers for the whole year. For instance, one of Ontario’s major grocery chains, when dealing with a major baby carrot supplier, might be asked to pay more per unit if it only wants carrots during Ontario’s off-season, he said.

Streef isn’t complaining. It’s just the way of the globalized marketplace. The brothers are willing to compete. They’ve adapted.

“It can be a frustrating business at times, but it seems to be working out not too badly. We have a fairly constant business, week in and week out (when the season is on),” he said.

Compared to other North Americans, Canadians eat a lot of fresh produce. The trick is to get Canadian-grown produce onto their plates.

When the brothers purchased their carrot business in the late 1980s, they marketed fresh-picked carrots that were simply dug, washed and bunched before being moved to one of Ontario’s major grocery chains. Four or five years later, because of shifting consumer demand, they made a substantial equipment investment and moved to peeled and packaged baby carrots – marketed under the Minnies brand name.

The deal with the major chain has since evaporated. Streef’s Minnies are now sold through independent food retailers in Ontario.

The Streef brothers begin harvesting their carrots about the last week of June and finish about the end of November. In other months, their buyers need to access baby carrots that are grown somewhere else.

To help get around the question of seasonal availability, the Streefs import carrots to their facility at the Toronto Food Terminal. This helps keep their buyers happy.

There’s also an opportunity to move Ontario carrots to the southern United States in the heat of summer.

Higher transportation costs may be nudging the pendulum toward regional production, but Streef doesn’t think it will make enough of a difference. The cost of a transport truck traveling from California to Toronto used to be around $3,500 (U.S.). Now, it’s more like $4,700. The value of the baby carrots in one of those trucks is close to $17,000.

“If fuel prices remain where they are, we’re going to see freight costs increase by 35 percent,” Streef said. “And if transportation costs go up, you’ll see that reflected in the retail price at some point.”

While the bigger picture is of interest to Streef and his brothers, they’re happy to have a small share of Ontario’s baby carrot market.

Their product is certainly less traveled. The carrots are dug, packaged and ready to ship on the same day.

The carrots are produced on 200 to 250 acres of muck near Komoka, just east of London along Highway 2, where the plant is located.

The business name – Borowsky Farms Ltd. – was kept by the Streefs. So were some key employees, including plant manager Betty Anne Pawley and Lawrence Vanderwerff, who helped install the processing line and keeps it running smoothly.

The carrots grown are relatively thin. Typically, anywhere from two to four baby carrots can be made from each.

After an initial wash, raw carrots move on conveyors through a dozen or so different steps, most of them fully automated, Pawley said. The carrots are sized, peeled, shaped, sorted and placed into clear plastic bags with a little water. They’re then packed into waxed cardboard boxes onto which ice is piled.

Streef said they’re good for three to four weeks, as long as the cold chain is maintained.

Streef farms with his brothers Martin, Peter, John, Jack and other family members.




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