Canadian group studies robots

By Dan Ovsey, Financial Post

When you think of where the average flower bouquet comes from, most people would envision an open field with dedicated workers toiling in the hot sun to plant and harvest Mother Nature’s bounty. And they’d be right — but not for much longer.

With horticulture becoming an increasingly cutthroat industry internationally, Canadian growers have been struggling to maintain a competitive edge. Fewer and fewer Canadians are willing to take on seasonal work, forcing horticulturalists  to look abroad for labour.

“A lot of people just don’t want to work in a field, bending over and picking up flowers; it’s hard work,” says Henk Sikking Jr. who runs Pioneer Flower Farms Ltd. in St. Catharines, Ont.

In an effort to make Canadian growers more competitive, a new initiative is attempting to take cost-cutting processes typically found in large, industrial environments to more natural ones.

The Prosperity Initiative for Vineland is a $5.5-million project involving south western Ontario-based not-for-profit Vineland Research and Innovation Centre, local flower growers, mushroom harvesters, and robotics and automation engineers. The project’s funding is equally shared by Vineland and the federal government’s FedDev Ontario program.

The aim is to help curb costs in the horticulture industry by providing robotics and automation technology to growers to reduce their labour costs.

“The cost of production is a huge issue,” says Vineland CEO Jim Brandle. “In horticulture, it can range from 40-60% of the [total] cost of any product. That’s very high. When you look at it, you realize, it’s the cost of labour that’s the problem.”

At Pioneer Flower Farms, Mr. Sikking has a staff of about 160 workers, half of which are seasonal. Of those, approximately 25 work at one time, planting an estimated 400,000 bulbs in a day and 45 million in a year to create 2 million pots. In addition, labourers spend countless hours packaging the flowers through a manual four-step process.

“Labour costs have been going up and packaging is one of our highest costs of production,” he says. “If we can automate that, that would save a [lot] of labour.”

Read the rest of the stories and see photos here.