With a strong program in Central Mexico and expanded acreage in Santa Maria, CA, to complement its Watsonville, CA, production, Seven Seas Berries has become a year-round grower-shipper of strawberries.

Watsonville-based Seven Seas Berries, which is the grower-shipper-supplier arm of Tom Lange Co. Inc. headquartered in Springfield, IL, relishes the added elements that this expansion gives it in the strawberry division of the firm.

Tom Lange Co. President Greg Reinauer said being intimately involved in the growing end “gives us better control over production and allows us to be more active in planning with our customers to fulfill their needs.”

He said the company has always had a field team but now that team “has more control over the final output. It changes the dynamic of how we work.”

The final result, he added, is a better, more consistent pack with higher-quality fruit. In 2016, Seven Seas Berries can deliver its own fruit all 52 weeks of the year. Moving forward, Reinauer said the firm anticipates adding an organic piece to its Mexico production, and possibly to continue expanding its acreage in Santa Maria though he characterized the current volume level as “our sweet spot.” The company has been involved, in one way or another, with growing and/or shipping berries from Watsonville for most of the past two decades and its volume is fairly good, though Reinauer said there is still room for growth in acreage.

Reinauer said this berry season did get off to a slow start but all indications are that it is starting to heat up and, notwithstanding the California rains falling as he was talking in early March, supplies should continue to build throughout the month. May and June are typically the peak shipping months for California strawberries.

Tom Lange Co. Inc. is a multi-faceted organization with a logistics operation, wholesale-distributing offices all over the country and the Seven Seas Fruit division, which is the grower shipper element. Each firm is a separate company but they do offer operational and practical synergies that can be taken advantage of.

For example, Reinauer said it is a positive when the logistics firm can satisfy the transportation needs of the berry customers, and help reduce the time involved in the transporting of the fruit to the buyer. In addition, he said it is a company-wide advantage when the many Tom Lange offices around the country can sell the firm’s own fruit, obtained through the Seven Seas divisions.

Besides the strawberry operation, Seven Seas has a California citrus production facility, and import/export divisions that handle the marketing of imports and exports, including blueberries. Reinauer said that while the blueberry imports and strawberry production is handled separately, the firm is exploring synergies that might be exploited for its customers in the berry category.