Fullerton Orange Juice Plant Adding Shift, Hiring
By CHRIS CZIBORR
Lake Wales, Fla.-based Citrus World Inc., maker of Florida’s Natural and other juices, plans to start another shift at its Fullerton plant and add 10 people or so to its 80-person staff.
The move is in response to added business and Citrus World’s recent joint venture with Sherman Oaks-based Sunkist Growers Inc., according to Pat Vannoy, Citrus World’s Fullerton warehouse logistics manager.
Under the venture, dubbed Florical, Citrus World plans to use some Sunkist Oranges for juice in a move designed to boost Western sales and cut costs.
“Our production is busy and we are getting new business,” Vannoy said. “Our not-from-concentrate business is up 15% to 20%.”
The 200,000-square-foot Ful-lerton plant recently set up a production line to do bottling for Lake Success, N.Y.-based Arizona Beverage Co. and Kahului, Hawaii-based Maui Land & Pineapple Company Inc., Vannoy said.
The plant also makes Florida’s Natural and Donald Duck orange juice brands, the latter from concentrate.
The Fullerton plant plans to hire people gradually, Vannoy said.
“It takes a lot of time to train new people, so we usually hire two people at a time,” he said.
Citrus World is part of Florida’s Natural Growers, a Lake Wales-based cooperative owned by about 1,000 central Florida citrus farmers.
The Fullerton facility gets orange juice trucked from Florida and then bottles and distributes it along the West Coast. As a result of the Sunkist venture, the company plans to use Sunkist oranges during the months when Florida’s Natural doesn’t have fresh oranges from its home state.
The pact should help Citrus World cut storage and shipping costs, Vannoy said.
“It’s not cheap bringing all that juice from Florida all the way out here,” he said. “What (Florical) means to us is that now instead of bringing all of our juice clear out from Florida, we source a percentage from Sunkist Growers.”
Sunkist is building a processing plant in the Central Valley. Apart from the Lake Wales and Fullerton plants, Citrus World has a facility in Bartow, Fla.
