Scotian Gold

The Scotian Gold Co-operative was created in 1957, evolving out of the old United Fruit Companies co-operative of apple growers, formed in 1912 by growers to work together to store, pack, ship and market their apples together in co-op warehouses all along the DAR. To cope with the collapse of the British apple export market, the United Fruit Company built a pair of large warehouses and a food processing plant at Coldbrook in 1946 to process apples more efficiently and develop new products. The company reorganized in 1957 and took the name "Scotian Gold". The name came from a successful brand of apple juice and sauce developed in the 1920s by a co-op fruit plant in Middletonwhich the United Fruit Companies had picked up to market apple products from 1940 onwards. Scotian Gold grew steadily expanded in the 1960s until it occupied a large site on both sides of the DAR mainline at Coldbrook. Scotian Gold had a long private spur at Mile 4.2 on the Kentville Subdivision serving the plant, its cold storage warehouses capacity of 240,000 bins of apples, along with the co-op's fertilizer operation, Valley Fertilizer Limited. Scotian Gold was a large DAR customer generating hundreds of inbound and outbound cars until the decline of the the DAR in the 1980s. Today the Scotian Gold facility remains the largest apple plant in the Maritimes, processing 60% of the region's apple crop.

Gallery

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  United Fruit Companies plant at Coldbrook that later became Scotian Gold, October, 1949.

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  Air photo of Coldbrook with the Scotian Gold Plant, White Rose Oil bulk plant and Atlantic Wholesalers, ex Howard Bligh warehouse, circa 1963-64.

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  Spur to Scotian Gold northside plant at Coldbrook, 1993.

References and Footnotes

• 1969 Memorandum of General Information Corporate Info, page 10
• 1961 Dominion Atlantic Railway Employee Time Table - October 29, 1961, page 4
• Maire Bishop, "Memories of Coldbrook" (1999) Kings Historical Society, p. 76

External Links

Scotian Gold company site - History of Co-op]