EcoTECH reaches deal with supermarket chain

The company behind an so-called eco-industrial park west of McBride says it has landed a major customer.

Seattle-based ecoTech Energy Group Inc. filed a statement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission saying it reached a five-year $61.3-million deal to supply the Overwaitea Food Group supermarket chain with food grown at the site once in operation.

"The deal with the supermarket chain, having basically sold the product before we build the facility, shows a sign of faith and gives us really the motivation now to push on," ecoTech chief operating officer Stuart Mason said Monday in a telephone interview. "It's the one thing we needed."

To be anchored by a five-megawatt combined-heat and power station, ecoTech is developing the park at the old Lamming Mills townsite 10 kilometres west of McBride and 204 kilometres east of Prince George.

About nine hectares would house an indoor "aquaponics" facility - a combination of hydroponics to grow produce and aquaculture to raise fish - "without artificial chemical or fossil hydrocarbon pesticides, herbicides or synthetic growth inducements" the company says in a press release.

The power station, in turn, would burn primarily wood pellets.

The company aims to start operations in three years and claims it will have the capacity to grow $50 million worth of food each year at full capacity.

Mason said logging at the site will begin in the next few years.

"Progress is slow but it's there," Mason said. "It's just a matter of financing and all the bits and pieces falling into place, and as each piece falls into place, we can do the next piece."

Under the deal, announced Jan. 5, Overwaitea would purchase about $12.3 million worth of produce each year, according to the filing, and ecoTech expects to begin delivery in the third quarter of 2013.

Overwaitea had no comment when reached Monday.