![]() ![]() Martin Barnett is executive director of the Baking Association of Canada, which represents roughly 600 member bakeries across Canada. estimated the Vancouver refinery was producing about one-third of its typical capacity. In its latest quarterly report, Lantic Inc. More than 130 members of PPWC Local 8 have been on the picket line for nearly three months, leaving refinery operations minimal. In a given year, Soldera said, the facility produces between 150,000 and 220,000 tonnes of sugar a year.īut today the refinery is producing a fraction of that. Rogers continues to make sugar in the same big, grey refinery built in 1890. Unless, of course, there was suddenly not enough sugar to go around. “If you wanted to start up a new sugar refinery in Canada, there would be a whole lot of startup costs and costs to starting relationships that the existing companies had already made,” Willmore said. But Willmore said the barriers to enter into domestic production are substantial. There are few restrictions on importing refined sugar. and competitor Redpath control virtually all domestic production. Which is why a strike at one refinery could create shortages, entice new companies to enter the market and disrupt access to something as common as sugar. Since the start of the sugar business in Canada, a handful of companies have controlled domestic sugar production, sometimes with the tacit blessing of courts and government. “There’s lots of sugar out there on the market.” “We’ve been noticing all kinds of companies coming out of the woodwork now,” said Soldera, president of Public and Private Workers of Canada Local 8. Requests for comment to Aggarwal were not returned.Īdrian Soldera, who leads the union local that represents the striking refinery workers, noticed the new brand along with others that have popped up on shelves with sugar sourced from Thailand and beyond. 29, the day after the strike began.Īccording to the provincial business registry the company’s sole director is Ashok Aggarwal, whose Surrey family owns other food companies. That’s because Tiger Distributors Ltd., the company that packed the sugar, was founded on Sept. Shoppers wouldn’t have recognized the brand. Plastic packs of the new brand began appearing in some Save-On-Foods locations, often on the shelves where white bags of Rogers Sugar might have been. Unless they happened to find Tiger Sugar. Many shoppers across Western Canada might have been out of luck. Lantic Inc., which owns the refinery, has kept it running with a skeleton crew of managers, but at a fraction of its capacity. Within weeks, bakeries told media outlets they were running out of sugar and supermarket shelves were sometimes bare. 28, workers at the Rogers sugar refinery in Vancouver went on strike. By Zak Vescera, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter THE TYEE ![]()
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