Sun World International LLC has named Moonlight Sales Corp., headquartered in Reedley, CA, as its newest licensee, enabling the Moonlight family of companies to access and expand Sun World's renowned peach, plum, nectarine and apricot varieties along with marketing its premiere brands.

Moonlight is an industry-leading farming company specializing in product branding and retail merchandising strategies. It is owned by brothers Russ and Ty Tavlan, who also manage the company's growing, packing, marketing and distribution of product grown on its farm holdings.

Moonlight's primary focus is on high-input, capital-intensive peaches, plums, nectarines and apricots in the summer, along with oranges, lemons, mandarins and pomegranates.

The appointment follows recent decisions by Sun World to bolster its stone fruit breeding program and to expand its California presence by licensing its proprietary plum, peach, nectarine and apricot varieties to selected California grower marketers. Moonlight joins three other California licensees and 22 companies worldwide that comprise Sun World's stone fruit licensing network.

In addition to distributing stone fruit from new varieties developed by Sun World, Moonlight has been awarded a license to use Sun World's brands, including Black Diamond, Honeycot, Super Star and Black Giant, in the marketplace, according to David Marguleas, executive vice president at Sun World.

"Sun World is excited about the opportunity to share its unique line of red and yellow fleshed plums, aromatic apricots and flavorful peaches and nectarines with Russ Tavlan and the Moonlight organization," Marguleas said in a press release. "He brings vision and creativity as well as the commitment to quality and scale that retailers appreciate."

Sun World's fruit licensing program involves more than 1,000 producers and marketing companies in most of the world's major fruit-growing regions.

In addition to creating new and better tasting peach, plum, nectarine and apricot varieties, Sun World's new variety development program focuses on a full range of fresh grapes with extraordinary characteristics such as enhanced flavor, distinctive taste, larger berries and clusters, earlier and later ripening times and availability, and increased productivity.

Sun World, a longstanding U.S.-based producer and marketer of fresh fruit, operates one of the world's largest table grape and stone fruit breeding programs. Since its inception in the mid 1970s, the company's Variety Development Center has released countless varieties with improved flavor, size, color, shelf life and extended seasonality. In addition to production on its own California properties, Sun World and/or its licensees grow these proprietary varieties in Australia, New Zealand, North America, Europe, South America, Israel and South Africa.