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Tina Chow
RJT Owner Tina Chow and her little dog.
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Tina Chow and Horses
The RJT property was formerly an equestrian farm, and while Chow still has horses she began growing the berries in 2007.
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Frederick Lee
Frederick Lee, sales manager with RJT Blueberry Park in Aldergrove.
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 controls 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.
Freeze Dried Blueberries
“We give them our [growing] standard via a contract,” notes Lee. “We only use BC blueberries. We have to measure the size and sweetness.”
Per RJT standards, as blueberries are picked, they go into a reefer-truck waiting in the field. The truck transports the chilled berries to the IQF line in the RJT on-site plant. With this step, the first of the company’s products is ready to be packaged and sold as frozen blueberries. All other product lines are made from these grade A IQF berries.
“This year we are estimating [processing] about 1.5 million pounds of frozen blueberries,” notes Lee. “And one million bags of freeze dried blueberries.”
Chow tried shipping frozen berries overseas but found the process left too much room for error.
“We’re worried about a good product,” she says. “Frozen berries are expensive and hard to ship. The first time we shipped over to Japan [customs] kept them for over a month.”
From here, she tried to think of what products could be shipped that were 100 per cent natural. Dried berries are an option RJT still produces, but they didn’t meet her desire for a product that looked great, tasted delicious and offered an extensive shelf life.
“I want to ship a 100 per cent natural product to other countries to show them how good it is,” Chow adds. “We figured out freeze dried is the best one. They can keep for five years. Only one problem with freeze dried; the equipment is too expensive.”
She didn’t let that slow her down. RJT started small-scale freeze drying in November 2016, then with help from Farm Credit Canada, Chow purchased larger-scale freeze drying equipment. She built a new 36,000 square foot manufacturing plant on a second site just a five minute drive from the original plot. The freeze drying line is being customized to RJT’s requirements.
The addition of $4 million in equipment makes RJT the only large-scale, specialty producer of freeze-dried blueberries in Canada. While other companies do freeze-drying, Lee explains, they will freeze dry anything.
“They only do a freeze dry procedure,” he explains. “We control every procedure. We want to keep our products [consistent]. The major product for RJT is freeze dried blueberries because they are 100 per cent natural and 100 per cent local.”
It takes approximately 1.5 pounds of fresh blueberries to make 60 grams of freeze dried berries. RJT packages them in 60g zip-lock, foil-lined bags as well as a smaller 16g snack size which is now being carried by 37 Waves Coffee houses, TNT Supermarkets and other specialty retailers.
“I think this will change the industry,” Lee says. “This is a high-tech product.”
The shelf life for dried blueberries is two years compared to freeze dried berries which have a life of five years due to the removal of all water.
The equipment is capable of freeze drying other types of food, but for now, RJT will stay focused on blueberries. If that changes in the future the only expansion would be into other types of fruit.
“At this moment, we only want to focus on blueberries,” notes Lee. “It’s a different model. All the neighbours supported Tina to build the cold storage. She wanted to do things a different way. She can pay the farmers back quickly.”
“I want to show people we can do it a different way,” agrees Chow.
Chow is typical of many entrepreneurs. She has a variety of things that interest her including the packaging aspect of RJT products. Lee notes that Chow designs and develops all of the packaging from the freeze dried fruit, syrups and jams to the frozen fruit, dessert wines and dried blueberries. That list doesn’t even include the honey business RJT acquired in 2016.
“Honey is a good thing too,” Chow says.
Honeyview Farms
According to Lee, Chow owns the biggest apiary in BC and these bee hives only do their business on local farms. The 42-year-old business is based in Rosedale and the honey is now another RJT Blueberry Park product line, including a wide range of honeys divided into types by the plants the bees frequent, creamed honeys and some berry-fruit infusion honeys all produced – you guessed it – on site at RJT.
Raw honey comes to the plant where it is blended and packaged.
“It was started as a family business,” Lee explains. “The son is still the main apiarist.”
When asked why RJT would purchase an apiary, Lee explains simply, “Japanese customers only want the best blueberries.”
It’s more of that control of the product RJT exhibits in everything they do. This is truly a case of end-to-end control of the best products possible.