Empire Co. Ltd. announced the next seven locations for the expansion of its FreshCo discount banner, six in Alberta and one in northern Ontario. With this announcement, the company has now confirmed 37 of approximately 65 locations in western Canada. In December 2017, the company announced plans to convert approximately 25 percent of its Safeway and Sobeys locations to FreshCo over a five-year period. Empire is on track with the Project Horizon commitment to open 10 to 15 FreshCo stores in fiscal 2021.

Walmart has seen that its customers love the speed and convenience of pickup and delivery, and it said it's committed to finding faster ways to serve them, which is why it's scaling the number of stores that will also serve as local fulfillment centers. The company is already planning dozens of locations, with many more to come.

A local fulfillment center is a compact, modular warehouse built within, or added to, a store. In addition to fresh and frozen items, LFCs can store thousands of the items we know customers want most, from consumables to electronics.

Procurant, a cloud-based software company transforming the global food supply chain, announced the release of Procurant Farm Check, a mobile task management application for organizations that harvest, package, store and ship perishable goods. Farm Check brings visibility, automation and digital workflow to a range of critical processes related to the production and distribution of fresh food.

Officials for the 2021 Organic Produce Summit, which is currently scheduled for July in Monterey, CA, are expecting to finalize the dates and the venue in February.

Matt Sealey, the founder of OPS and the CEO of the Organic Produce Network which hosts the summit, said all options are being explored with an eye toward making a final decision by the end of February. “We don’t want to be tone deaf to what is going on around us and we want to be respectful of what people and the country are going through,” he said in late January.

Applewood Fresh, a premier produce brand and fourth-generation grower-packer-shipper-marketer of Michigan-grown apples, is shipping EverCrisp apples. The variety expands its availability this year as a late-season, sweet apple that packs a superior crunch.

The Kroger Co. announced that Kevin Brown and Amanda Sourry have been elected to the company's board of directors. The company also announced that Bobby Shackouls is retiring from Kroger's board after more than 21 years of service.

"We are grateful to Bobby for his more than two decades of service on the Kroger board of directors, including five years as lead independent director," said Rodney McMullen, Kroger's chairman and CEO. "The board and the entire Kroger family wish Bobby, his wife Judy, and their family all the best in retirement.