Engaging the Canadian mosaic: Q&A with CPMA’s Ron Lemaire

The Packer’s Kristin Leigh Lore spoke with Canadian Produce Marketing Association President Ron Lemaire about innovation, artificial intelligence, supply chains and what he’s most looking forward to for the Canadian fresh produce industry at this year’s CPMA Convention and Trade Show in Toronto on April 25-27. 

The following are excerpts from the interview.

The Packer: April 25 is just a few weeks away. What are you most excited about for this year’s convention?

Lemaire: In 2025, CPMA will celebrate our 100th anniversary. The organization has really changed and grown as the industry has grown during that time. So that’s something I’m quite proud of — our longevity. We adapt and change to the market needs, that’s one element of our success.

At the same time, one of the benefits to our membership is the ability to pivot, turn on a dime and listen to the members, hear what they need, when they need it and to be able to adjust to new market issues and challenges.

The pandemic was a perfect example of that. We had to quickly navigate and change different areas of our focus to support our members, give them information in real time and understand the challenges and barriers they were facing.

What advocacy issues are top of mind for CPMA?

Personally, I started with CPMA back in 1998. We work very closely with the health community because we like to say we’re on the side of angels.

As Canadians consume more [fresh produce], they get healthier, and the industry also prospers through selling more. That’s one of our vision statements as an industry: prosperity and industry; population health and industry prosperity, they’re linked together.

Government relations makes up our advocacy strategy and is one of our core foundational elements. It’s the piece of our business that a lot of companies either don’t have the resources for or don’t have the time to deal with.

What a lot of industry doesn’t realize is we [at CPMA] are always in the background and always engaged with government, not only domestically but globally, to make sure produce flows. We work on files that industry may not even be aware of, which is what we should be doing so that the product may move. There may be issues, but the industry doesn’t even realize we’ve corrected something because we quietly in the background addressed the challenge that could be stopping them.

I’m a firm believer in community and how we drive the village together and grow and develop the entire industry. With a very large industry base of over 840 member companies from around Canada, North America and around the world, it makes for a very dynamic convention and tradeshow when all our members come together and drive the business through the entire supply chain.

What a vast network you describe. Shifting gears and looking ahead at the upcoming CPMA convention in late April, what are the top takeaways you expect attendees to leave with?

Some of the key focus areas we will talk about at this year’s convention include innovation, like CPMA’s innovation hub.

This year’s keynote speaker is Josh Linkner, a world-renowned innovator. He drives disruption. He talks about how we look at hypergrowth and how to lead within that hypergrowth environment.

You know, when we’re starting to see change and consolidation and the impacts of the pandemic that have really changed how we must look at our business, now is a perfect time to understand what that innovation means.

I’ll also share a “State of the Union” at the lunch on Wednesday. I’ll be talking about some about innovation, but really what we’re seeing on the horizon is AI [artificial intelligence]. I’ll share how we’re leveraging AI, how we’re leveraging real-time data and share CPMA’s robust data strategy.

We’re looking regularly at what consumers are doing, what industry is doing and how the two are connecting. [We’re also] working with merchandisers at retail, who really are that frontline, hands-on connection point with our consumer base in Canada, and what we’re doing to try and support that core part of our industry.

Also, [we’re looking] even further back to the grower-packer-shippers and connecting all the pieces to make sure we’re getting the right product, at the right time, for the right people.

We recognize the extremely complex cultural mosaic in Canada that demands a diversity of product from around the world. [Canadian consumers] love local, but they also love making sure they get high quality at the right price. But they also want to see year-round strawberries, blueberries and raspberries and a range of other products from around the world and in Canada.

I love how you put that; a mosaic is such an apt metaphor. I’m curious, are Canadian growers, distributors and shippers still experiencing supply chain challenges?

Yes, geopolitical challenges remain. While we’re seeing the supply chains begin to loosen slightly and improve, they’re still a massive issue, especially for access to containers and container costs. We’ve seen in other parts of the world costs have softened, and we’re seeing softening of costs in Canada, but they’re still high compared to where we were pre-pandemic.

Input costs are still a challenge, but this isn’t just a Canadian issue. Additionally, access to packaging is still a challenge and a cost. Especially meeting consumer demand for more sustainable packaging. That demand hasn’t changed, if anything it’s ramped up coming out of the pandemic, which puts greater stress on the industry to try and meet consumer demand.

We’re looking at labor too; it’s still a global issue. In Canada, we’ve been fortunate there has been some policy change to enable improved access to some of the temporary foreign workers that we need … so there are some positive changes happening there.

When it comes to the Canadian fresh produce industry, what are you most excited about when you look ahead?

Where the CPMA convention really shines is that people don’t realize you can be a competitor but also an ally. If you are short or have a production issue and your customers still demand product, you can reach out to a competitor from another part of the world, another state or another province and they become a partner. Trading amongst competitors is becoming significant and helps make sure the customer gets the product they need at the end of the day.

That great thing is that when we come together as an industry, it’s not only building the vendor-retail or vendor-foodservice partnership, but [it is] also about sitting down with your allied partners and your competitors and finding that nuanced relationship that meets the market need in the event of a catastrophe, because we are seeing more of them happening every year. And while we pivot and adjust, we also adapt and change our business model.