Flavor Tree Fruit's Maurice Cameron Talks New Partnership With SunnyGem™ Pomegranates
HANFORD, CA - For Flavor Tree Fruit, the fall is bringing not only plenty of produce, but an exciting new partnership to boot. Through a new partnership with one of California’s major pomegranate players, SunnyGem™, the company will be offering the category for the first time ever, with plans to bring on plenty of value-added goodies by season’s end. Truly a 0 to 60 endeavor for the now eight season old company, I spoke with Flavor Tree’s Sales Manager Maurice Cameron about what’s in store for the fruitful new partnership.
“During our first eight season’s as a company, Flavor Tree Fruit has mainly focused on California cherries and stonefruit, but this year we are excited for this to be our first year marketing for fresh pomegranates,” Maurice tells me. “Through this new partnership with SunnyGem, we will be marketing over 2,500 acres of pomegranates—that’s over 1 million cartons. We’re already have a pretty extensive customer base, but now that we’re becoming a major player in the pomegranate deal, we’re looking to make new connections.”
Maurice tells me that the company will start shipping its San Joaquin Valley-grown Wonderful variety pomegranates in mid-October, with plans to continue shipping through February. And because Flavor Tree Fruit has its own packing facilities, cold storage, and controlled atmosphere technology, Maurice says the company will be one of California’s last pom shippers in the game.
In addition to the tray pack cartons that the industry is used to seeing their pomegranates in, Flavor Tree Fruit will also be marketing its SunnyGem products is a variety of packaging, both traditional and value-added.
“We also offer retailers pom bins and club packs, and later on in the season we’ll be adding a number of value-added pom products,” Maurice says. “We’ll be introducing packs of pomegranate arils, as well as SunnyGem branded pom juice. This we’ll make us a provider of one of the only providers of pom juice that is not made from concentrate and using this season’s crop.”
Want to learn more about Flavor Tree Fruit and how you can add SunnyGem pom products to your stores? Visit www.flavortreefruit.com.
