Carlos Visconti and Leona Neill of Red Sun Farms Discuss Efficiency, Sustainability, and Expansion
NORTH AMERICA - We often talk about looking to the horizon. But, sometimes, if you keep your nose to the grindstone long enough, the future will find its way to you. In this case, I speak to how Red Sun Farms has been quietly laying the groundwork in several areas for growth, expansion, efficiency, and sustainability.
“It has been an unprecedented year from all angles of the business. These recent events have caused many organizations to challenge their ways of doing business, but at Red Sun Farms it validated our commitment in a Seed to Plate solution. Ensuring that our customers have quality supply under the most trying conditions, our team has used this time to reconnect with customers and invest in innovation to better serve their consumer demands,” shares Carlos Visconti, Chief Executive Officer of Red Sun Farms USA and Canada.
This reconnection and investment, the Red Sun team points out, spans its reach from Canada to Mexico as it looks to everything from a maximized growing season to increased capacity.
“Our team in Mexico has maximized the growing season through a strategic combination of farm altitude and climate conditions,” Carlos says. “This approach has allowed the team to deliver the longest possible growing season, while maintaining best practices for food safety, sterilization of the facility, and crop rotation.”
As customer demands increase, Carlos explains that the team has worked to identify ways to increase capacity and, over the last few months, everyone in Mexico, the U.S., and Canada has been conducting analyses to do just that in all three countries. Promising that there is much to stay tuned for, he shares that there has been a lot of excitement within the brand and where it’s going, not the least of which is the already in-action project for Red Sun Farms Ontario.
“Red Sun Farms Ontario is a three-phase project. The first phase is 27 acres, and the total project will be 63 acres,” he explains. “We are targeting completion of Phase One’s build for October and will be planting the third week of January, with production starting in March 2020.”
October has become the month on the produce calendar in which many unveil the current year’s efforts and next year’s big focus, and while COVID-19 has changed much for 2020, the opportunities of October still stand. Especially for Red Sun Farms.
“Our packaging team has been very busy the last few months testing and validating new sustainability technologies. We can’t wait to share these with our customers at PMA’s virtual Fresh Summit,” Leona Neill, Director of Marketing and Packaging, comments. “There has been a lot of talk about sustainability in the last year. The challenge is finding a solution that will meet the needs of our consumer and their respective municipalities, our retail customers, and the Red Sun Farms operational demands.”
Life, and produce, move pretty fast. And judging by how much the Red Sun Farms team has in the works, not to mention under wraps, they will not be missing a beat of it.
