Show goes on at Red Hat
As fire-damaged facility awaits repair and recertification, 280 employees at produce packing plant won’t miss work
A major loading dock fire at its Redcliff packing plant won’t keep Red Hat Co-op down for long, company officials told the News on Monday.
On Saturday, heavy black smoke was seen throughout the region emanating from the plant, and fire departments from three municipalities tackled the blaze to keep it from spreading.
On Monday, general manager Gillian Digman said work was already underway to repair the facility and clean the smoke damage throughout.
In the meantime, she said, all 280 employees would either be engaged in the cleanup or put to work at another packing plant run by a Red Hat member.
“Life doesn’t stop; our workforce will remain fully employed,” said Digman.
The investigation into the fire was continuing on Monday, though the company hoped to have the building back and ready for repair late in the day.
The receiving doors were badly damaged in the fire that also spread to cardboard stores, and destroyed a large trailer.
Smoke damage was suffered throughout the facility.
“Onsite cleaning began on Sunday, and we’ll carry on with that this week,” said Digman.
“There are packers who will help us with what growers are taking off right now, and we have a member with their own packing facility.”
Interim packing will take place at Big Marble Farms, a company run by Ryan Cramer and Red Hat board member Alberta Cramer.
That facility can handle cucumber production, and would run on a 20hour shift to accommodate extra produce.
Other produce from growers will be shipped to Calgary for packaging until the Redcliff facility is renovated.
At the time of a 2012 expansion, the co-op was handling 5.5 million cases per year of cucumbers, tomatoes, eggplant and other produce.
Government food inspectors were on site Monday to discuss the process of recertifying the plant when the damaged receiving area is cordoned off from production lines.
All produce on site at the time will be disposed.
“Fortunately we were really quite lean (at the time of the fire); we had been busy, but sales had been very good,” said Digman.
“We didn’t have as much produce in the coolers as we would have at other times.”
Company officials said the work of firefighters prevented the damage from being worse.
Neighbouring business, Roy’s Woodshop, is also reporting only very minor damage at the facility that had rough lumber, stacks of dried wood and pallets near an adjoining fence.
Owner Lloyd Sunderman said he and other workers scrambled to move piles of potential fuel away from the fence, while fire crews entered the yard and hosed down his stock.
“It was close enough to be scary,” said Sunderman. “We were sweating a little bit, but it turned out alright.”
Fire departments set up in the yard, located east (generally downwind) from the fire at the facility.
As it is, workers will have to clean some soot off lifts of lumber before they are shipped.