Fire destroys warehouse at Tecumseh vegetable plant

by SUSAN MANN

Southwestern Ontario vegetable grower John Lugtigheid was heading back to his Kent Bridge-area farm when his wife called him in his pickup truck near noon to tell him the Tecumseh plant of their vegetable processor, Bonduelle Ontario Inc. had gone up in smoke.

“When you look at it on the Internet the fire looks quite extensive,” Lugtigheid says, adding he isn’t sure if the company can move product anyplace else.

In total, Lugtigheid says they have 175 acres of peas in the ground, 50 acres of the first planting of green beans and 110 acres of the second planting of green beans and 50 acres of sweet corn for the Tecumseh plant and squash for Bonduelle’s Ingersoll plant.

Company representatives have told officials with the Ontario Processing Vegetable Growers “they’re going to do what they can and maximize the other plants out,” Lugtigheid says. “They’re probably harvesting some peas now that are supposed to go to Tecumseh and they’re going to the other plants.”

Bonduelle’s parent company is based in France. The company has sales of $3 billion annually and it is the largest vegetable processor in the world. Its North American sales are $600 million annually. The company has three plants in Ontario (at Tecumseh, which is the largest plant in Canada, Strathroy and Ingersoll), four in Quebec and four in the United States

Fire broke out at the Tecumseh plant at 2 a.m. Friday and was knocked down by about 1 p.m. Friday but fire officials planned to stay on the scene throughout the night on Friday into Saturday because of the danger of walls possibly collapsing and to extinguish hot spots.

The plant probably does one-third of the processing vegetables in Ontario, Lugtigheid says. It processes both frozen and canned product.

Laura Moy, Town of Tecumseh director of staff services and clerk, says firefighters from the town along with ones of Windsor and the Town of Lakeshore were called out to fight the blaze. There were no injuries to firefighters, workers or people. There were workers in the plant when the fire broke out but they were all evacuated.

Moy says the Bonduelle fire is “one of our largest fires.”

There isn’t a cause or damage estimate yet, she says.

Bonduelle America CEO Daniel Vielfaure said during a press conference at the Tecumseh town hall Friday afternoon the fire destroyed their warehouse but the production side of the plant was saved. The warehouse contained 12 million pounds of frozen vegetables and unpacked goods.

But if the production part of the plant was salvaged the company can “work with this and work around that,” he says. “It looks like our production side was protected and if that’s the case that’s very good news” because there are a lot of vegetables still in fields that need to be harvested.

Vielfaure estimates there’s about $20 million worth of vegetables in Ontario fields still to be harvested.

Carol Gravelle, public relations officer at the Office of the Fire Marshal and Emergency Management, says two of their investigators have been dispatched to investigate the fire at the Tecumseh plant. They’ll be doing an “origin/cause/circumstance investigation,” she says.

One of the criteria that trigger Fire Marshal’s office investigations is damage of more than $500,000 “and that’s when we would be asked to investigate,” she says.

Al Krueger, executive assistant to the Ontario Processing Vegetable Growers, says the plant was currently harvesting and processing peas. Due to the cooler weather during the past couple of days “everyone’s caught up and they’ll be able to send those peas to either the Strathroy or the Ingersoll plants” which Bonduelle also owns. “Presumably they can juggle some stuff around and that’s what we’ve heard is happening.”

Krueger says about 70 farmers grow peas for Bonduelle. “Peas are planted in a sequence and some guys would be harvested already, while some guys would be coming up and some guys it wouldn’t be ready for harvest for another couple weeks.” The pea harvest lasts until early August.

The Bonduelle plant in Tecumseh also processes carrots, green and wax beans and sweet corn.  In total, about 110 farmers grow for Bonduelle, Krueger says.

Jim Poel, chairman of the Ontario Processing Vegetable Growers, says they know fire has done extensive damage to the plant but “we don’t know exactly how it’s going to affect the receiving of raw product. Bonduelle has two other plants in Ontario, they have plants in New York State and they’re doing all that they can to move raw product to plants that are able to function and process the product.”

Poel adds Bonduelle has kept growers informed of the situation and “the challenges they’re going to face.”

There’s going to be plenty of raw product compared to production capacity but “we’re hoping they’ll do the best they can,” he notes. BF