Cocktail mix boosts jobs at Highbury Canco

A new cocktail mix bottled in Leamington has officials at Highbury Canco toasting the fact that employment is more than 500 fulltime workers.

Highbury Canco added 20 jobs earlier this year when production rolled for a new Caesar mix.

“We’re up over 500 full-time employees now and we’re still hiring,” said Highbury president Sam Diab. “When we took over in the summer 2014 we were at 250 (employees).”

The French’s Food Company officially launched two varieties of Not Your Ordinary Caesar Cocktail Mix earlier this week. The mix, which comes in an original flavour and a spicy version, is made with 100 per cent Canadian tomatoes.

This latest endeavour is a continuation of French’s Canadian promise which unfolded last year with a commitment to Leamington-grown tomatoes for its ketchup.

“We wanted to make ketchup in Leamington but we couldn’t do that,” said French’s president Elliott Penner. “We looked back at what we could do in Leamington and this came up.”

“We’re not the cannery we were when we started up. We’ve got a couple of new lines. We’re doing other plastic bottling and high speed glass jars for pasta sauce and salsas,” said Diab.

Diab has seen French’s Caesar mix on local store shelves, and he doesn’t see this as the last partnership between the two companies.

“I do think our relationship has really progressed and grown to something both companies are proud of,” he said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if there are other announcements about other products in the near future.”