Dole Fresh Vegetables opens its doors for tour of operations
Dole Fresh Vegetables opens its doors for tour of operations
SOLEDAD, CA -- In an industry that is increasingly moving toward transparency of its operations, Salinas, CA-based Dole Fresh Vegetables Inc. hosted a media tour of its Monterey County operations on Thursday, April 26.
While by its nature the tour helped to promote the company, the tour also was designed to offer insight into fresh produce operations industrywide. Top executives for Dole fielded questions from local, national and trade media while providing a daylong tour that included a visit to one of its 20- acre Romaine fields as well as a tour of its processing plant, both here in Soledad.
Eric Schwartz, president of Dole Fresh Vegetables Inc., said that processors typically function by having separate lots of their product in the warehouse. For instance, spinach for processing may be one lot while spring mix is a separate lot.
"You run a lot, then the next lot," Mr. Schwartz said. "It's not all going into the hopper at once." Sometimes Dole will run two lines (separate lots) at once during processing, he said.
Mr. Schwartz said that in the field, the company looks for a "systematic problem" and that with any isolated problem it wants to "stop product in the field."
Dole has brought its spinach in-house, no longer having it processed at Natural Selection Foods LLC in San Juan Bautista, CA, and it is in the process of having its spring mix brought in-house as well.
Natural Selection Foods will "still do our spring mix until early next year," Mr. Schwartz said, adding that the move to bring salad product in-house already was under way and is not the result of the E. coli outbreak in spinach that was processed by Natural Selection Foods under the "Dole" label last August.
By the end of the summer all raw product for Dole Fresh Vegetables will be processed in-house, Mr. Schwartz said. The company has processing plants in Ohio, North Carolina, Yuma, AZ, and Soledad, CA.
Mr. Schwartz said that Americans consume 12 million to 15 million four- ounce servings of bagged salads each day, and he noted that those figures are conservative and reflect retail sales only.
Fresh Express is the bagged-salad leader with 45 percent of the market followed by Dole at 30 percent, said Mr. Schwartz. Ready Pac Produce is a distant third, and private labels combined make up more than 9 percent of the category.
Last fall, Dole initiated a radio frequency identification system for tracking its products back to the fields and for use with every step in its internal chain of product movement.
"We felt [an RFID system] would enhance traceability systems and add value to food safety," said Stephan Robinson, vice president of business process development for Dole Fresh Vegetables. He said that all the company's regions, including Mexico, "need to be on board by the end of the year with Dole's RFID."
By incorporating the global positioning system into the RFID technology, Dole can get a location within 30 feet of where a crop was harvested instead of within 25 acres, which was the distance prior to implementation of its new system, Mr. Robinson said. The company's traceability is "now 30 minutes as compared with two hours," he said.
While by its nature the tour helped to promote the company, the tour also was designed to offer insight into fresh produce operations industrywide. Top executives for Dole fielded questions from local, national and trade media while providing a daylong tour that included a visit to one of its 20- acre Romaine fields as well as a tour of its processing plant, both here in Soledad.
Eric Schwartz, president of Dole Fresh Vegetables Inc., said that processors typically function by having separate lots of their product in the warehouse. For instance, spinach for processing may be one lot while spring mix is a separate lot.
"You run a lot, then the next lot," Mr. Schwartz said. "It's not all going into the hopper at once." Sometimes Dole will run two lines (separate lots) at once during processing, he said.
Mr. Schwartz said that in the field, the company looks for a "systematic problem" and that with any isolated problem it wants to "stop product in the field."
Dole has brought its spinach in-house, no longer having it processed at Natural Selection Foods LLC in San Juan Bautista, CA, and it is in the process of having its spring mix brought in-house as well.
Natural Selection Foods will "still do our spring mix until early next year," Mr. Schwartz said, adding that the move to bring salad product in-house already was under way and is not the result of the E. coli outbreak in spinach that was processed by Natural Selection Foods under the "Dole" label last August.
By the end of the summer all raw product for Dole Fresh Vegetables will be processed in-house, Mr. Schwartz said. The company has processing plants in Ohio, North Carolina, Yuma, AZ, and Soledad, CA.
Mr. Schwartz said that Americans consume 12 million to 15 million four- ounce servings of bagged salads each day, and he noted that those figures are conservative and reflect retail sales only.
Fresh Express is the bagged-salad leader with 45 percent of the market followed by Dole at 30 percent, said Mr. Schwartz. Ready Pac Produce is a distant third, and private labels combined make up more than 9 percent of the category.
Last fall, Dole initiated a radio frequency identification system for tracking its products back to the fields and for use with every step in its internal chain of product movement.
"We felt [an RFID system] would enhance traceability systems and add value to food safety," said Stephan Robinson, vice president of business process development for Dole Fresh Vegetables. He said that all the company's regions, including Mexico, "need to be on board by the end of the year with Dole's RFID."
By incorporating the global positioning system into the RFID technology, Dole can get a location within 30 feet of where a crop was harvested instead of within 25 acres, which was the distance prior to implementation of its new system, Mr. Robinson said. The company's traceability is "now 30 minutes as compared with two hours," he said.
