Friend of the Industry: Hans Konings

Hans Konings was born July 26, 1935 in Utrecht Holland. He followed his parents and siblings and immigrated to Canada with his new bride in November of 1959.

After arriving in Canada he worked with his father in construction. Hans started going to night school to take business and marketing courses. He soon started working in the retail grocery business at Dominion Stores and later moved on to Buy Low Foods. On January 3, 1976 Hans and his brother Bert opened Konings Wholesale. As they were starting, BC Sugar was in the middle of a strike and the industry was in dire need of sugar. Konings Wholesale went around and found sugar in San Francisco and brought it north by carload to customers like Dare's, Mrs. Willman's and White Spot. The rest as they say is History... within eight months they had 4000 feet of warehouse space and 2 loading bays on First Avenue in Burnaby. In 1980 they had 18000 feet of space at Malkin Avenue in Vancouver and 4 years later they moved to 25000 feet on Production Way in Burnaby. In 1987 Konings Wholesale was sold to Staley Continental in Chicago. Eight months later that company was sold to Tate and Lyle of the United Kingdom, then almost right away, Tate and Lyle sold to the Sysco Corporation of Houston, Texas. In October 1992, Konings Wholesale moved to a state of the art facility in Port Coquitlam, it boasts 180,000 square feet of space with the ability to expand to double its current size.

Hans enjoyed immense success; he was hardworking and dedicated to his employees and customers. He traveled and enjoyed his personal life with his wife Yoka and his 3 children Marcel, Melanie and Monique.

Hans retired from work in June of 2000. He planned to travel and enjoy his retirement years, but unfortunately was diagnosed with cancer in November 1999 and passed away on October 10, 2001.