Jan. 16, 2009
There wasn't an empty seat in the house at a public meeting hosted by Ocean Spray at the Rogersville Legion Tuesday night.
People continued to file into the Legion hall well after the planned 7 p.m. start time and struggled to find a place to stand as they waited to hear what the world's largest cranberry juice producer has planned for the area.
Organizers set out 270 chairs and almost all were full at least 30 minutes before the meeting started. It was standing room only after that as people filled every available space.
Ocean Spray's vice-president of corporate strategy Paul Stajduhar was one of the company's representatives at the meeting.
He told the crowd there are beautiful bogs in New Brunswick and commended the province's growers for the work they've done.
"They've had tremendous success growing the industry."
The company organized the public meeting to provide information about a proposed cranberry operation around Lake Despres and to give the community a chance to have their questions addressed.
Ocean Spray is a co-op owned by over 600 cranberry growers and 50 grapefruit growers with their headqaurters in Massachussets.
Stajduhar said Ocean Spray has been succesfull at growing their business around the world and the growers made a collective decision to invest in cranberry bogs.
"We desperately need more fruit."
To help fill that need, Ocean Spray plans to start with 350 acres of berries planted in the Rogersville area. Stadjuhar said they will wait until those acres are established before they move on from there.
"We have a vision for a very substantial cranberry operation here."
Senior manager of supply development Bill Frantz said cranberries need acidic soil, a lot of water, a good source of sand and flat terrain, but they also need a labour force to work the bogs.
"We think we have that here too."
During the meeting, Ocean Spray presented their plan for the area, which, for now, is focused on the first two phases. The company applied for a lease on provincial land around Lake Despres up to South Lake and has submitted an environmental impact assessment for approval.
The engineering concept for the operation is finished and the contruction phase would create about 30-60 jobs. Future growth depends on the success of the first two phases and could create about 50-100 jobs once all the phases are complete.
The company hopes the area around Rogersville could eventually support almost 2,000 acres of cranberry beds.
Ocean Spray hopes to see the plan's approval by March and construction start in April.
When asked about the possibilty of processing facilities in Rogersville in the future, Stajduhar said an area needs to be able to produce about 50-80 million pounds of cranberry concentrate or sweet and dried cranberries to make it worth building a facility there.
"It will be a while."
With Ocean Spray moving into the area, they bring their expertise, but will still need people to work here, Stajduhar said.
"Our desire is for nearly all of those people to be from the local community. "
Premier Shawn Graham was at the meeting and told the crowd all of the money going into the project comes from private investment.
"I want to tell you up front there is no government money being invested in this project."
To help potential employees and the company, Graham said he will bring in someone from the Department of Post Secondary Education and Training to develop a candidate database of people seeking jobs with Ocean Spray.
"I just made this decision after seeing the need expressed."
Graham said he heard about Ocean Spray's interest in Rogersville about 15 months ago and put together a team to win the company over.
"Tonight we're seeing the result of that success."
After the meeting, Rogersville mayor Bertrand LeBlanc said he was satisfied with Ocean Spray's answers and that the company was being conservative with their numbers.
"They don't want to raise expectations up too high."
Rogersville-Kouchibouguac MLA Rose-May Poirier said she thought Ocean Spray answered a lot of questions and is bringing a big opportunity to the area.
"This is good news for the community."
One of the concerns Poirier had before the meeting was how the operation would affect the Lake Despres eco-forest project and she said the project's committee did a presentation for the Ocean Spray representatives earlier in the day.
"That's something that's going to go ahead."
Poirier said everybody wants to work together and the job applicant database is a good idea for people who wondered who they could go to about jobs with Ocean Spray.
"People were waiting for something positive to happen."
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