Limoneira Co. in Santa Paula, CA, one of California’s oldest citrus growers, is a major producer of California citrus and one of the largest producers of lemons in the United States, with year-round availability of Eureka and Lisbon lemons, seedless lemons, Meyer lemons and variegated pink lemons.

The company also grows Navel and Valencia oranges, grapefruit, and an array of specialty citrus such as Cara Cara oranges, Blood oranges, Minneola Tangelos, Satsuma Mandarins and Pumelos.

In addition to citrus, Limoneira grows cherries and pistachios and is a major producer of avocados.

The company currently has 11,000 acres of land in production, according to John Chamberlain, director of marketing.

“We are acquiring acreage to be able to increase our supply” of lemons year-round to customers in the United States and abroad, Chamberlain said. The company expects to ship around 3.4 million to 3.5 million cartons of lemons over the course of the 2014-15 season, but “we have a goal of getting to 10 million cartons a year,” triple the company’s current volume.

“We have been focusing on an initiative called One World of Fresh Lemons,” he said. “That is basically making sure that we’ve got supplies for our customers 24-7, 365 days a year. To that end, “we have made recent acquisitions in Arizona and also in Chile.”

In addition to acquisition of citrus acreage, “we acquired Associated Citrus Packers in Yuma [AZ]“ as well as the packinghouse and equipment at Marlin Ranch in Yuma. “We think we are going to be able to pack about 600,000 cartons of fresh lemons out of the Yuma facilities,” Chamberlain said.

In Santa Paula, “we’ve got a new packinghouse,” he said. The newly built facility on the home ranch, which should be completed in early 2015, “is going to increase our packing capacity by 120 percent.” It includes new cold storage capabilities and automated traceability features as well as technology that will “preserve fruit quality while increasing flexibility in our new packaging.”

Fresh lemons are easier to ship globally than some other commodities, Chamberlain said. “We are creating a distribution system” enabling the company to sell lemons year-round to foodservice and retail customers around the world, supplied from “our growing regions in California and Arizona” and now Chile.

The company has launched a marketing initiative it calls “Three to Five in five,” he said. Currently per capita consumption of fresh lemons in the United States is a scant 3.2 to 3.3 pounds per year. The goal is to push that up to five pounds per capita within five years.

In some other parts of the world, such as Chile, per capita consumption of lemons is around 10 pounds per year, he said.

“We are helping to drive consumption within the United States through our Unleash the Power of Lemons campaign” which tells consumers about the health benefits of lemons and the many different ways they can be used, he said.