Looking back on our last visit to Canada

18/12/2023

Last month, Patrick SUPPES our Dealer Account Manager went to Canada for a visit rich in experience.

 

What did you do during this visit ?

I traveled to the Eastern Canada sales region to visit dealer customers, I have the pleasur to meet 3 key customer at their main office :

  •  AgroCentre,  in Saint Remi, Quebec
  • Norseco  in Laval, Quebec
  • Vesey’s  in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island

At each meeting we discussed our commercial portfolio offering, historical and current business along with any appropriate exclusive contracts and the forecasts for the remaining year. We also touched on the Product development trials that each conducted with our products.

Patrick SUPPES, Dealeur Account Manager

What key varieties and crop did you exchange ?

This visit gave me the opportunity to talk about Vilmorin-Mikado's key products:

  • Beets: Camaro and Grenade(Rhizomania resistant). The focus in near future will be on the Grenade because of the rhizomania disease pressure in north east USA and eastern Canada
  • Carrots: Volcano & Bolero
  • Eggplant: Megal & Nadia
  • Lettuce: Bluerock, Rhapsody, Sucrette
  • Bunching Onion: MKS-N501
  • Tomato: Cobra

What did you learn from this visit?

There are 3 main points I'd like to take away from this visit :

1

CEA : The Controlled Environment Agriculture is a growing segment in the east coast region(both USA & Canada) – There is a nice fit for our microgreens, early trialing is showing VMK varieties preforming better than competitors.
 

2

Culled fresh market carrots are sold to cut/process/frozen companies(makes sense to me now, had never thought of it till I was informed on my visit)

3

The importance of logistics and seed arriving on time. Canada often needs 2-3 months lead time from when Yuma receives seed to the time our dealers get this material into end user hands.

Carrott packaging from Vesey’s

Volcano carrots in Versey's
Packaging unit in Versey's

Picture of a bin of volcano carrots before being washed/inspected and packaged for the fresh consumption market.

Packaging unit in Versey's
Packaging unit in Versey's

Picture of a small envelope seed packaging machine from the 1870’s, this unit will package approximately 1 million envelopes each calendar year. 

What are your expectation for the future ?

We are currently shipping seed stock to each of these customers for them to position in time to meet customer planting schedules in the spring of 2024(May)

We are reviewing and planning specific product development trials and soon will ship this sample material for each customer to be planted and evaluated in the spring of 2024(May-September)

Site visits in June/July to tour fields and collect on the ground feedback from growers and customers of both commercial and development varieties.

 

If you have any inquires on the east coast dealer region, don't hesitate to reach Patrick SUPPES. 

By email : patrick.suppes@vilmorinmikado.com

By phone : 1-831-998-2018 

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