Sunkist sees improved returns this season

Sunkist Growers held its annual meeting yesterday in Visalia and is reporting “significantly higher“ revenues so far this 2009/10 season.

The California and Arizona cooperative is benefiting in part due to declining acreage of oranges nationwide coming mostly out of Florida in recent years as that state has been hit by a combination of rough weather, disease and pests.

While Florida has been losing millions of trees to the deadly ”citrus greening” disease, California so far has not been affected — although the arrival of the insect that can carries the disease in southern California has growers on edge.

In a letter to growers on January 29, Sunkist said not only are prices for navels up this season but volume is higher by nearly a million cartons compared to last year.

Sunkist CEO Russ Hanlin said even though the lemon crop is short, the co-op had held firm on prices despite aggressive price cuts by offshore handlers. Shipping point prices are more than $4.50 per carton higher than last year.

The co-op has been growing the volume for specialty citrus including the tangy Cara Cara oranges and an array of tangerines. These are also way up in tonnage, along with prices. Cara Caras are now a million carton crop for Sunkist.

The California tangerine crop is expected to be up a whopping 22 percent higher than last year, the USDA reports, and at a record volume of nearly 17 million cartons. By contrast the navel harvest is 80 million cartons. New varieties of seedless and near seedless tangerines that come to market over two week intervals during the winter and spring months has led to widespread plantings of new trees in recent years, some of which are just now hitting the market.

On the all important export front, the news is good as well with the popularity of citrus fruit over the Chinese New Year.

Juice Division Fallout

In the citrus juice category the news isn’t so good. It’s been a tough year Hanlin said in his letter to growers, noting that Sunkist has lost its division head, Ted Leaman. The vice president left the company recently leaving retired president Tim Lindgren to backfill the job, at least for a while.

Sunkist said the price for orange juice was as low as 68 cents early last year compared to $1.24 now —a sign this segment is in recovery.

Sources say Leaman left the company for premium juice maker Juice Harvest of San Bernardino. Sunkist suffered some of its lowest returns in the juice division, crippled not just by low prices but also low volume. Leaman did not return a call placed to the Southland smoothie maker, but he is employed there.

Florida’s citrus crop has been on a rapid decline from 340 million cartons as recently as the 07/08 season to just 270 million cartons this year. That compares to the smaller 110 million carton level in California. Citrus greening disease has crippled orange and juice volume in both Florida and Brazil — the worlds’ two largest players. That could help California where citrus greening has not been found — at least not yet.

The Sunkist name continues to have great currency with the co-op’s branded licensed product sales exceeding $1.4 billion, CEO Hanlin reports.

SOURCE: Sierra2TheSea.com