Cranberry Partners LLC, based in Wisconsin Rapids, WI, has allied with Naturipe Berry Growers Inc., headquartered in Salinas, CA, to offer a new fresh cranberry sauce kit.

Cranberry Partners takes title to, and markets, a “significant” volume of fresh organic cranberries, according to Bob Wilson, managing member.

According to Naturipe, the cranberry sauce kit is packed in a clamshell and “consists of eight ounces of fresh cranberries and a six-ounce Au Naturel Holiday Orange flavor packet (preservative free). Just mix and cook on stove top or in microwave. Homemade delicious sauce in minutes!” There are 18 units to a case, 60 cases to a pallet.

Wilson said Cranberry Partners is partnering with Naturipe on the cranberry sauce kit and is a marketing partner.

A new fresh cranberry sauce kit is now available from Cranberry Partners.“We are highly privileged to have a partnership with Naturipe, which is a national brand for fruit with blueberries, blackberries, raspberries and strawberries,” said Wilson. “To represent their cranberry business” is a particular honor.

“The design of the kit allows for easy and efficient merchandising at store level,” according to Naturipe. “The easy cooking instructions are located on the bottom of the clamshell.”

The clamshell has “lots of shelf appeal and merchandises very easy with your other berries,” Naturipe’s product literature continued. “A first of its kind, the fresh cranberry sauce kit takes the mystery out of preparing one of produces’ most nutritious fruits. The kit offers an easy solution to delicious cranberry sauce. With the simplicity of this product we hope that consumers will in fact ‘Kick the Can’ this holiday season.”

Wilson said the organic business “is quite a bit smaller than the conventional business, yet it’s extremely important to what we do in fresh.” Organic cranberry production is harder because “when you maintain organic certification and manage the cranberries, the tools in your tool belt are severely limited.”

Only one herbicide, which is derived from apple cider vinegar, is allowed for use, “So you are fighting weeds tooth and nail,” he said. “Most cranberry growers don’t like the idea” of producing organic berries. “It is too challenging and they don’t like the idea of giving up production.”

Wilson said the specialized business is especially difficult “when you look across the street at your ‘conventional’ neighbor and they have berries popping out all over the place and you have weeds and limitations on how you handle your crop. There are not a half-dozen organic [cranberry] growers left in Wisconsin. There are very few in the country. There are a large chunk in Quebec. Their conditions are better suited to organic production.”

Wilson continued, “We have an enviable list of growers” in the organic and fresh business. “We work with them closely. And we have the enviable partnership with Naturipe. They know how to reach consumers as well as anyone.”

Cranberry Partners is a sister company of the Cranberry Network LLC, which is also headquartered in Wisconsin Rapids, WI, and Wilson is the managing member of both companies. He said the Cranberry Network is the marketing agency for grower-shipper Habelman Bros. Co. in Tomah, WI, which is focused on fresh production.

Wilson said this year “is another in a long line of interesting growing seasons. We had a slow start and did not set as many berries. But it is still a sizable crop.” The characteristics of the 2014 crop “tends to favor good keeping quality for the fresh crop.”

Mid-September weather was going to be important for developing fruit size.

Habelman decided to launch its harvest a week later than originally planned, which is the week of Sept. 22.

“That will be the first week of shipping,” Wilson noted. “We would like to be done by the end of October, in a general sense.” In Wisconsin in 2013, the harvest wasn’t finished until the second week of November, “which was tough on the boys in the field. We do a water harvest and if the water freezes before the machinery gets in, it’s a real battle. It can be a real challenge.”

The Cranberry Network uses its fresh market focus to supply the market not only for Thanksgiving, but also for the Christmas food shopping season.

“We pack to order which has been a real integral part of our success,” Wilson said. This allows retailers to have cranberries on the shelf “when consumers want them and it brings incremental sales into the month of December. Consumers want cranberries for Christmas as well as Thanksgiving. Having them from year to year is a big part of our work.”

The new product with Naturipe will “further drive demand,” Wilson noted.

“We promote the fruit as healthy and work to get people out of the canned section to the produce aisle,” he said. “We have fresh, quality cranberries at the time people are most interested in having them.”

Wilson said that there are three primary cranberry-producing areas. Of these, Wisconsin’s production is down about 10 percent from 2013.

“Massachusetts is on track with an average crop and Quebec has launched itself into the realm of being a top-producing region in the last two years,” he said. “They are on track for another record crop.”