Sister-city commerce explored
Kelowna, Kasugai hold expo in bid to broaden ties
We’d like to send them our cherries, apples, wine, beer, cider and honey. They’d like sell us candy, diapers, cosmetics, transformers, and heating and air-conditioning ducts.
We’d both like to exchange tourists and students.
All was outlined Wednesday at the Kelowna-Kasugai Expo at the Kelowna Golf and Country Club.
Kelowna has had a sister-city bond with Kasugai since 1983, and delegations have gone back and forth.
However, the relationship hasn’t resulted in much import-export business.
“After 34 years, we’re really just getting it kick-started now,” said Ken Fix, vice-president of the Kelowna-Kasugai Sister City Association.
“It’s been mostly cultural exchange up to this point.”
The purpose of Wednesday’s expo was to further that cultural exchange, but also see if commerce is possible.
Currently, the only real exporting a Kelowna area company does to Kasugai is by Quails’ Gate Winery, which has a distribution deal with a business in the Japanese city of 350,000, which is really a bedroom community of Nagoya.
The Japanese love fresh cherries and the idea of fruit grown in Canada’s pure air and soil.
However, the codling moth, which can attack Okanagan cherry trees, is an issue.
The Japanese won’t import Okanagan cherries with a codling moth threat.
That’s why there was a seminar Wednesday outlining the Okanagan’s Sterile Insect Release Program, an initiative that stops the moth from reproducing and reducing the need for pesticides.
The hope is the Japanese will clear Okanagan cherries for import.
The BC Fruit Growers’ Association also had a booth at the expo, touting not just cherries, but the Valley’s other tree fruit crops, from apples and pears to peaches and plums.
Other Kelowna companies with booths at the expo included Arlo’s Honey, Sun-Rype cider, Let’s Go Transportation’s wine tours, Big Surf Beer, Prohibition Ale, Farm Business Consultants, Maple Pass (Canada’s value card), Okanagan Basin Water Board, Vibrant Vine Winery, House of Rose Winery and Pacific Business Brokers.
Kasugai companies with booths at the expo included Daimaru Honpo Candy, Oji Nepia diapers, facial tissues and wetlettes, BFirst cosmetics, Shimizuya department stores, Toyo Electric (transformers), and Arrow-M heating and air-conditioning ducts.
Tourism Aichi, which represents the central part of Japan, where Kasugai is located, was there touting the region as a destination for Canadian tourists.
And Chubu University had a booth in hopes it can form some sort of partnership with UBC Okanagan for semesters abroad, and student and cultural exchanges.
The expo was also the site for the official signing of an extension of the sister-city agreement.
A Kelowna Chamber of Commerce Connex social and networking mixer followed the expo so local business people could mingle with the 27 official delegates from Kasugai and the 19 students from Chubu University.