Tomato harvest in the Leamington area the best anyone can remember, industry says

This year's crop of processing tomatoes is the best anyone in the business has seen in recent memory, and growers and processors alike are thrilled.

"We're probably looking at maybe 15 per cent above our expectations," said Highbury Canco CEO Sam Diab.

"This harvest is our best on record so far as Highbury, definitely since 2014. Some might say one of the best that we've had in this facility's history."

The drier conditions this summer made for the best quality and quantity of tomatoes and the least amount of disease.

Tom Keller has been involved in tomato growing for 47 years and he's never seen a better year.

"I'm ecstatic about it. It feels good to finally have such a wonderful crop after last year. It was excessive rainfall," said Keller, who is also a director on the Ontario Processing Vegetable Growers board. 

Keller says when he has a good year like this he feels more comfortable spending more money on equipment and investing in infrastructure improvements to his farm.

That leads to spinoff economic benefits for businesses in town.

"Definitely into the millions if not into the 10 of millions [of dollars]," said Chad Robinson, restaurant owner and president of the Leamington and District Chamber of Commerce board.

Tim Suitor is a worker at Highbury Canco who co-ordinates operations with the crop coming into the plant. He says this is best crop he's seen since he began working for the plant when it was Heinz in 1987. For him, great years like this translate into job security.

"It means a lot, not just to me. To everybody involved here. The community of Leamington. The town of Leamington, the grower base, even the temporary foreign worker base the growers bring in. It's a feather in the cap of the industry as a whole," said Suitor.

Highbury Canco is expecting to expand distribution of its Canada Red pasta sauce, which is now on the shelves at Giant Tiger and Walmart.

With steady growth since 2014, the company has been able to expand the number of contracted growers from 21 to 26 and bring the number of employees up to 630 from the 250 it started with in 2014.

It now produces more tomato paste than the old Heinz plant produced ketchup, but it's still heavily dependent on tomatoes because in addition to producing pasta sauce and paste, it also produces tomato soup and juice and a variety of other processed products.

Diab hopes to add another three to four products to their lineup, allowing them to hire about 70 more employees over the course of the year.