CUTLER, CA — Wawona Packing Co., here, one of the larger grower-packer-shippers of stone fruit in California, with more than 6,500 acres in production, has grown considerably over the years since its founding in 1948.

Brent Smittcamp, standing next to some solar panels, part of Wawona Packing’s new five-acre installation.

This winter has seen several major developments in the company’s expansion program. As reported previously in The Produce News, the company has formed a new export and import marketing company, Wawona Moonlight Global, in joint venture partnership with Moonlight Sales Corp. with Tina Haga.

“Being that we live in a global economy, it just made sense to set up a global import-export company to complement what we do domestically,” Brent Smittcamp, president of Wawona, told The Produce News Feb. 1.

Since then, Wawona has added two more members to its sales team, expanded its product line to include several new fruit categories, completed construction on five acres of ground-mounted solar panels generating nearly a megawatt of electrical power and broke ground on a 65,000-square-foot warehouse expansion scheduled for completion by the stone fruit harvest in May.

New on sales at Wawona are John Hein, who was previously with Trinity Fruit Sales Co. in Fresno, CA, and Brian Fisher, who is new to the industry.

According to Mr. Smittcamp, grandson of the company’s founder Earl Smittcamp, Mr. Fisher started with Wawona in early January. He was previously in radio advertising and was looking to “change his career path. He is in the process of learning the stone fruit deal from the ground up.”

Mr. Hein, a 30-year veteran of the produce industry, “brings a wealth of knowledge and a wealth of experience” dealing with a diverse commodity base, Mr. Smittcamp said. “We are extremely excited to have John on board.” His hiring was announced Feb. 20 in a company press release that also stated Mr. Hein “will manage the development of Wawona’s expanding commodity base.”

Mr. Hein had been on sales at Trinity Fruit Co. prior to joining Wawona. Previously, he had worked in sales at Crown Jewels Marketing in Fresno and at Kingsburg Orchards in Kingsburg, CA.

Mr. Hein, Mr. Fischer and Ms. Haga join Kendal Ankrum, Brad Gostanian, Joe Acosta, Ben Vived and Mark Berlinger, sales manager, on the Wawona sales desk.

Wawona has already added citrus to its tree fruit line, and now the company will be diversifying its product offerings. “We are expanding into pears, Asian pears, kiwi, cherries and apples,” Mr. Smittcamp said, adding that those are all items with which Mr. Hein has extensive experience.

“On the tree fruit, we are vertically integrated,” Mr. Smittcamp said. “We grow our own fruit. On the specialty commodities, we are going out and solidifying a grower base where that’s their expertise, and we will complement that with our own fruit” through a combination of new plantings and acquisition of existing orchards.

Wawona decided about five years ago “to get into the organic arena” and is one of the larger organic tree fruit growers-shippers in the United States, Mr. Smittcamp said. That came about because customers mentioned a void in the organic tree fruit category.

“We researched it and did some due diligence, and we took the same varieties we have in our conventional program and started planting that on the organic side,” he said.

That program continues to expand. “We are in process of planting more because we can’t meet the existing demand out there,” he said. “We are going to take the same methodology that we used on the organic stone fruit, and we are going to get a new organic citrus deal on both Navels and Mandarins.”

Wawona’s new solar farm, which was installed by SPG Solar, is a ground-mounted system that will provide up to 70 percent of the electricity needs of the company’s Cutler facility, he said. “It should provide a savings of probably about $225,000 a year.”

As a leader in the organic arena, “sustainability is a key focus for us at Wawona packing, so solar made sense,” he added. The decision “wasn’t pure economics” but also involved “the intrinsic benefit of being socially responsible, giving back, sustainability and lowering our carbon footprint.”