BC's biggest grower-owned marketing co-operative has listed yet another asset.
BC Tree Fruit Co-operative recently listed an assembly of three lots on Sexsmith Road just off Highway 97 totaling 18.4 acres for $39 million with HM Commercial.
The property, located at 3334-3345 Sexsmith Road near Kelowna International Airport includes 148,888 square feet of controlled atmosphere and cold storage space as well as offices. The existing building was completed in 1982.
The listing brochure calls it "a highly valuable assembly in terms of the size of the building, but mostly the land." The brochure notes that other industrial properties in the vicinity have sold for upwards of $3 million an acre.
"Using typical industrial site coverages, we would estimate there to be approximately 3-4 acres of surplus land."
The high-visibility site features access off Sexsmith, which is proposed for widening from two lanes to four. The property already offers easy access for full-size tractor trailers off Highway 97N, which has made it ideal for the co-op.
However, the co-op is engaged in a strategic retrenchment that has seen it sell surplus assets in recent years and move towards consolidating operations.
The co-op sold its Water Street offices in December 2020 for $7.5 million. A year later, it unloaded a packinghouse adjacent to the former Tolko mill in Kelowna's north end to Mission Group for $23.75 million. Both sales were handled by HM Commercial.
Most recently, at the end of August, the co-op closed the sale of its Lake Country packing house for $15.8 million.
Both the sale in Lake Country and the current listing in Kelowna are both part of a consolidation process initiated in August 2022 that will ultimately see all co-op packing operations located to Oliver. The facility in Oliver will nearly double in size to approximately 220,000 square feet once the consolidation and expansion plan completes. The site is 16 acres and provides sufficient capacity for expansion.
Receiving stations in Lake Country, Kelowna and six other locations across the Southern Interior will remain open.
BC Tree Fruits has no intention to sell an 85-acre site on Old Vernon Road acquired in 2019 for a new state-of-the-art packing facility. Those plans were shelved last year in favour of consolidating operations in Oliver in view of rising construction costs.
