The new Okanagan Specialty Fruits facility had its official ribbon-cutting Wednesday before a crowd of OSF team members, Moses Lake Chamber of Commerce members and local dignitaries.
The plant broke ground in January 2022. The purpose of the facility is to process, slice and pack OSF’s product, Arctic Apples. The apples are genetically engineered to keep them from browning, and were the first genetically engineered apples approved for sale in the U.S.
OSF founder and President Neal Carter began developing Arctic Apples in Summerland, British Columbia in 1996: “We were picking apples and looking at bruised fruit and looking at poor returns (and) declining apple consumption. At the same time, we were watching the fresh-cut produce industry, you know, the cut-and-tumbled carrots, the salad mixes and ready-prepared salads. It was just taking off, explosive double-digit growth. And it's like, apples are not participating in this. Why? It's because they go brown. So how do we fix this?”
Carter set out to develop an apple that could stay fresh after it was cut, and had proof of concept in fruit in 2004, he said. The next five years were spent fine-tuning the apple and gauging the market.
Source: columbiabasinherald.com