The most important producer of pickles in Quebec could play the heroes and help a large American competitor who has lost feathers due to the pricing war.
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“All players must be healthy in order to preserve balance in the food chain,” explains Daniel Jurkovic, co-owner of putters food, the largest producer of pickles in the country.
As reported The newspaper Earlier this week, the pickles of the popular Bick’s brand, which belongs to the American company Treehouse Foods, disappeared about 30% of grocery stores in Canada, due to the tariff war.
Connections on cucumbers and pickles have increased the prices of this processed and wrapped product in the United States.
“In the short term, a big player in difficulty represents an opportunity for us to push our brand,” agrees Mr. Jurkovic.
“However, we must not forget that Bick’s still buys a good part of the cucumbers in Ontario,” he added immediately. We do business with these same suppliers, and a drop in volume for them, it is not a good thing for us. ”
Think long -term
In this context, Putters could “absolutely” try to appropriate the space left vacant on the tablets by the absence of its competitor. But, surprisingly, it is not excluded either to reach out to him.
“We could do copacking*for them [*transformer et emballer des produits pour leur compte. NDLR]», Dit M. Jurkovic.
The co-founders of Putters food, the biggest producer of pickles in Canada, John Tartaglia (on the left) and Daniel Jurkovic (right), in their Hagia-Sophie factory, in the Laurentians.
Photo provided by Daniel Jurkovic
“It’s a good company. They don’t deserve what is happening to them. We want to have a healthy and balanced market, which forces people to stand out via the quality of their products and a competitive price offer, ”thinks the entrepreneur.
“When there is a wave like prices, it’s never a good thing, because you can find yourself on both sides of the wave,” he illustrates.
The good side of the wave
For the moment, Putters is on the right side. The anti-Trump wave and the craze for local purchase allowed the Quebec company to considerably increase its volumes, “between 30% and 40%”, according to Mr. Jurkovic.
In fact, trade war has acted as an “accelerator”. Putters has worked to consolidate the Canadian market in 2024, establishing themselves as the biggest player in the country, and repatriating customers who had turned to providers of American pickles in the absence of a local source.
“The renewed popularity for local products has accelerated things.”
Putters buys and transforms around 10 million cucumber pounds in Quebec, and 5 million pounds in Ontario.
