YAKIMA, WA - As Borton Fruit makes its way into the second half of its Washington apple season, the company is gearing up for promotional periods with great quality and retail programs to increase apple sales into the summer months. Eric Borton, VP of International Sales & Marketing, tells me that February through May is a great time to promote apples prior to when other seasonal summer fruit offerings become available and are featured in produce departments.

“With a strong apple market and inflationary FOB prices this season for apples, it provides retailers an opportunity to drive higher sales dollars in the apple category that was flat this past season,” Eric says. “Also, with Valentine’s Day approaching this a good opportunity to highlight the Pink Lady apple. Its distinctive pinkish-red coloring compliments the Valentine’s Day festivities and provides a healthy alternative to all the candy offered at this time.”

Currently, Borton Fruit has the full breadth of its products for winter and spring promotions with good volumes of premier varieties like honeycrisp, pink lady, fuji and gala. The company is looking to promote with retailers and are excited about the opportunities they will have with them during the rest of the season.

“Fruit quality has been excellent so far this year and we expect it to continue,” Eric adds. “Over the coming months, we will be highlighting many of our varieties including our honeycrisp program. Borton Fruit is one of the largest honeycrisp growers in the industry. We were a very early adopter of the honeycrisp variety, planting substantial acreage on the front end, meaning most of our honeycrisp orchards have matured and are in the prime production stage, producing outstanding quality fruit. This allows for much better storage ability, improved overall quality and increased shelf life.”

Borton will be packing fruit from some of the company’s best producing orchards over the next couple of months, providing some outstanding quality fruit to promote in the second half of the season.

With fruit size being down this year, Borton has been offering a wide range of bag programs to help promote sales. Borton’s mesh bag program this year has been very successful as mesh bags really showcase the fruit well, allowing consumers to see the fruit and buy based on the actual fruit and the quality instead of just graphic packaging. To complement Borton’s bag program, the company is offering a unique mobile bag stand that the team has developed and are able to offer for retail partners.

“This bag stand is a new and fresh way to merchandise apples both inside and out of the produce department,” he says.

Eric also tells me that honeycrisp, gala and fuji continue to be outstanding sellers and reiterates that quality has been excellent to date. “Our volume is down compared to last season, which was a record crop for our company as it was with the industry, but we still have ample volume remaining for our programs throughout the rest of the year. With quality holding up nicely, we are in a very good position for the 2nd half of the season.”

With a fruitful year to start, Borton hopes to continue to partner with retailers and strengthen the ever-evolving apple category.

Borton Fruit