Canada-based vegetable and salad producer Saladexpress yesterday (6 June) announced its closure.
The St-Remi, Quebec-headquartered company said in a brief statement it has ceased its activities.
Saladexpress focused on processing and preparing fresh vegetable products. The company offered products in fresh, packaged raw or cooked formats.
Martine Leduc, Saladexpress' director of marketing and innovation, said the announcement meant the “definitive and expeditious closure of Saladexpress” after 35 years in the business.
She said: “In an inflationary context where the raw material is extremely vulnerable to climate change, every bad season like the one our market gardeners experienced last summer inevitably impacts the next link in the chain: processing.
“Promoting local vegetables has never been easy. However, our employees, suppliers, brokers and customers, all driven by this passion and passion specific to the fruit and vegetable industry, had always managed to make it all possible until this morning.“
Patrice Léger Bourgoin, general director of the Association of Market Gardeners of Quebec (APMQ) told the Le Journal de Quebec the announcement “is very bad news. The industry is trying to recover as best it can from the bad 2023 season. We did not need this announcement”.
He added: “More than ever, governments must succeed with the promised aid to financially support producers.”
According to the company’s website, Saladexpress has 135 employees and sales offices in Québec, Montreal, Toronto and Halifax in Canada and Detroit, Washington and New York in the US. It was founded in 1989.
France-based agri-food cooperative Agrial invested in Saladexpress in 2018. Fonds de solidarité FTQ had acquired the majority of the vegetable producer in 2010.
Sylvain Racette, CEO of Saladexpress said at the time of Agrial's investment: “This partnership, the first of its size for Agrial in Québec, will be mutually beneficial”.
Agrial is an agri-food cooperative that has over 60 fruit and vegetable production and processing sites around the world.
