Borton anticipating robust cherry marketing season
Borton anticipating robust cherry marketing season
Even though cherry volume from the Pacific Northwest is expected to be down by about 15 percent this season, Eric Borton, vice president of international sales and marketing at Borton & Sons Inc., said prospects in 2015 are exciting.
“Coming off of a record crop in 2014, this will still translate into very good marketable volume for the industry during the 2015 season,” he told The Produce News. “For our company specifically, we will be slightly off our volume levels we experienced in 2014, but we are still expecting a robust and great quality cherry crop for 2015. The mild winter and warm early spring has brought the crop along ahead of normal. We are trending 10-14 days ahead of last season. So far weather has been very conducive for growing high-quality cherries.”
The harvest began toward the end of May, and the company will have marketable volumes of cherries the whole month of June and first part of July.
According to Borton, retailers and consumers continue to show enthusiasm for Rainier cherries, and marketplace momentum continues to build. “Borton Fruit has a very strong Rainier cherry program,” he commented. “They are the only cherry variety that is truly different than the vast number of similar types of dark red cherry varieties. Thus, Rainiers provide a lot of merchandising value as well as being a great complement to the dark red cherries for the consumer.”
Approximately 20 percent of Borton’s dark sweet cherry volume and 10 percent of its Rainier volume are exported. “We ship to many markets, including Mexico, Canada, China, Southeast Asia, Korea and Japan,” Borton said. “We’ve experienced steady growth with our export volume, and we’re continuing to look at additional export markets to grow our volume.”
The cherry packing operation was updated in 2015. “We will have fully computerized optical sizers with the latest technology in color and defect sorting capability. With these updates to our packing equipment and technology, our state-of-the-art Rainier and red cherry packinglines will allow for a greater ability to deliver a consistent pack of outstanding quality cherries to our customers. We are committed to be a premier packer of Northwest cherries,” Borton stated.
