Mission Produce opens Ripe Center in Calgary

The Ripe Centre, based in Calgary, Canada, will service customers in Western Canada with ripe fruit throughout the year. Mission has operated a distribution centre Toronto since 2010, and the addition of the new centre in Calgary allows the company to service the Western half of the country from a centre that is designed to deliver to customers from Winnipeg to Vancouver. According to Ben Barnard, Mission’s Senior Director of Operations, the Ripe Centre implements new technology designed specifically for avocados.

“It is a 40,000 square-foot, purpose-built facility that has 4 ripe rooms with a total capacity to ripen 96 pallets. We developed the Calgary Ripe Centre with our internal engineering team. It uses the latest in avocado ripening technology that is unique to Mission Produce, including advance high-efficiency refrigeration, lighting and control systems to minimize our energy usage. It was designed and built to meet or exceed all food safety requirements.” According to Brent Scattini, Mission’s Vice President of Sales and Marketing, opening the Calgary Ripe Centre was a logical step in further serving the Canadian market. “The Calgary facility is a natural counterpart to our Toronto facility, and gives us the ability to service customers more rapidly. By having a depot in Calgary, we can relieve some of the burden on the Toronto Ripe Centre. It also allows us more ripe capacity while developing faster deliveries of both hard and ripe fruit for customers in the West. It gives us another hub and further extends our coverage of North America.” Mission’s President & CEO, Steve Barnard, added: “Canada is a very important market for Mission, and adding the Calgary Ripe Centre expands our capacity and our ability to distribute to our customer base in a timely manner. This is the third Ripe Centre we’ve opened this year–after opening Centres in Europe and China. We currently operate 11 Mission-owned centres around the world, and we plan to continue to grow globally.”

About Mission Produce: Mission Produce operates state-of-the-art avocado packing facilities in California, Mexico, Peru and Chile. In addition, the company’s global distribution network includes nine ripe centres in North America, with additional ripe centres in Europe and China. Over the past 34 years, Mission has grown to become the leader in the worldwide avocado business.