In an effort to grow its stone fruit-breeding and licensing business, Sun World International LLC has named six additional companies as stone fruit licensees, creating greater availability and distribution reach for the California company’s proprietary peach, plum, nectarine and apricot varieties.

Sun World operates a robust stone fruit variety development and licensing program in addition to its table grape breeding, growing and marketing operations. The newly appointed stone fruit licensees include two Australian marketers, three Israeli packer-marketers and a Chilean distributor.

In addition to distributing stone fruit from new varieties developed by Sun World, the six companies have been awarded licenses to use Sun World’s brands, including "Black Diamond," "Honeycot," "Super Star" and "Black Giant" in the marketplace, David Marguleas, Sun World executive vice president, said in a press release.

The new licensees consist of six marketing companies:

• Servicios Chilfresh Ltda., based in Chile’s Region VII in Curico, is owned and managed by Andre Luteijn. It was founded in 1993 as a leading fresh fruit exporter and today specializes in Asian markets.
• W.A. Farm Direct, a Western Australian horticultural marketing company based in Perth, is owned and managed by John Mercer, his son Bradley Mercer and daughter Jenny Mercer, and who, along with Brett Heather, bring diverse backgrounds in trading, retail services and variety development to their solid group of Australian stone fruit growers.
• Mercer Mooney, based in Perth, Western Australia, and in business for 100 years, is headed by General Manager Paul Neale and has around 800 growers supplying a diverse range of fruit and vegetable lines, including stone fruit.
• Ayelet Hashahar, a Kibbutz (collective community) in the Hula Valley in northern Israel, was established in 1915 and grows, packs and ships apples, pears, avocado, pomegranate, almonds and stone fruit. Its manager is Eyal Carmi.
• Rafkor, located in Rosh Pina in northern Israel, has been in business for 43 years and is managed by Gruner Benbenisti. It is privately owned by its grower members and packs and markets stone fruit, pears, citrus, pomegranates and kiwifruit.
• Rani and Shai Barness, a third-generation family grower-packer-marketer located at Moshav Bitzaron in south-central Israel that handles low-chill stone fruit as well as pomegranates, avocado and persimmons.

“These leading stone fruit companies, along with their producers, will ensure that supermarkets and consumers have even better access to our branded lines of proprietary fresh apricots, plums, peaches and nectarines,” Marguleas said, adding that the six new appointees join 19 existing Sun World stone fruit licensees operating in most major fruit growing regions of the world.

Sun World's fruit-licensing program involves more than 1,500 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 seedless grapes with extraordinary characteristics such as enhanced flavor, distinctive taste, larger berries and clusters, earlier and later ripening times and availability, and increased productivity.