Special to the News-Sun
LAKE WALES -- The 79th Annual Stockholders Meeting of Florida's Natural Growers was held at the Lake Wales Country Club on Monday. The theme of this year's meeting "25 Years and Growing Stronger" commemorates the 25th Anniversary of the Cooperative's flagship Brand, Florida's Natural.
The 2011-12 season was the greatest year in the Cooperative's history. Chairman Dick Fort stated, "By all measures, the Cooperative has experienced a record year in grower returns, sales, market share and customer loyalty." The success of our cooperative is inextricably linked to the success and growth of the Florida's Natural Brand.
"In virtually every aspect, the financial condition of Florida's Natural Growers indicates not only an improvement from recent years' already impressive results, but in many cases represented new records with a return of $1.90 for oranges and grapefruit at $1.55 per pound solid," reported Chip Hendry, chief financial officer. "The company also generated a profit on non-member business that significantly strengthens the Co-op's balance sheet. Gross sales for 2012 were $624.8 million."
"Growing the Member fruit supply is necessary to support real opportunities to increase market share. With the addition of our 14th member, Southern Gardens Grove Corporation, which will help address our fruit needs for the foreseeable future," said Chief Executive Officer Steve Caruso as he discussed the addition of a 14th member, located in Clewiston. "Despite unprecedented cost increases for energy operations were successful in managing costs through productivity increases and we close the year experiencing a record high market share, record gallons sold, record dollars sold and record loyalty."
Walt Lincer, vice president of sales and marketing reported, "The Florida's Natural Brand changed this cooperative 25 years ago from a private label packer to a consumer brand marketer. Our successes for the past year in distribution, market share, sales, consumer loyalty are on all accounts as a result of the Florida's Natural Brand."
Lincer presented an account of the highlights of the first 25 years of the Florida's Natural Brand, spotlighting the team effort that led to the success of the brand. He noted the big ideas, challenges and the accomplishments that brought the brand to its 25th year as he celebrated his upcoming retirement and the shift of the sales and marketing departments to Chris Groom.
Groom's experience includes a two-year tenure at the cooperative as senior director of marketing as well as prior experience within the Marketing departments of other consumer brand companies including Sargento Foods in Wisconsin.
First formed in 1933, the growers' cooperative was named Florida Citrus Canners Cooperative, as its main function was canning grapefruit sections and juice for its grower members. After the development of frozen concentrated juices in the 1940's, the Cooperative invested in the necessary infrastructure and became one of the largest juice processors in the state.
In 1969, the Canners Cooperative eventually changed its name to Citrus World, Inc. to better reflect its diverse product line. Today, the majority of the cooperative's sales are derived from the Florida's Natural Brand squeezed from 100 percent Florida oranges. The cooperative now uses Florida's Natural Growers as its name.
Florida's Natural Growers is comprised of fourteen grower organizations representing almost 1,000 individual growers who own nearly 60,000 acres of citrus in Florida. Florida's Natural Growers operates its processing plant in Lake Wales, with a juice packaging plant in Umatilla.
The Lake Wales facility employs 670 employees in Lake Wales and 101 in Umatilla.
It can extract more than 9 million pounds of fruit every 24 hours in peak season. Brands produced in Lake Wales include Florida's Natural, Florida's Natural Growers Pride, Donald Duck and Bluebird.
Sunday, November 18, 2012 - www.newssun.com/111812-floridas-natural