The Oppenheimer Group will add high volumes of British Columbia-grown sweet bell peppers to its catalogue this spring, alongside a year-long supply of English cucumbers.

A new alliance with Canada's Randhawa Farms will make Oppy a marketer of around 2 million boxes of sweet bell peppers and the company's earliest ever long English cucumbers.

Oppy’s greenhouse and vegetable category director Aaron Quon said they had already shipped the cucumbers in the first week of January, the earliest week to date.

“Now we can develop more cucumber programs with our customers on a larger scale than in the past due to increased volume and longer availability,” Quon said.

Meanwhile, greenhouse pepper grower SunSelect will lend a hand to Randhawa Farms to manage scheduling, picking, delivery and storage. The cucumbers and later bell peppers will be marketed under SunSelect's name.

SunSelect operates under a "24 hour" rule and strives to send all produce out on a customer-bound truck within 24 hours of picking.

Randhawa Farms’ owner Kan Randhawa said the farm was pleased to enter the new partnership.

“SunSelect is a proven, top quality grower with a brand that has a great reputation in the trade. They have also had a very successful partnership with Oppy for almost a decade. Oppy has a grower mentality — we view them as an extension of ourselves,” Randhawa said.

Randhawa Farms has 44 acres of peppers and four acres of cucumbers.

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