“We like to have control and make impact”

The Wonderful Company is well-known for its Halos, Wonderful Pistachios as well as POM Wonderful juice. What is unique about the company is that it doesn’t only sell premium brands but is fully vertically integrated. “Our vertical integration and leadership position is very important to us,” says Adam Cooper, VP of Marketing with the Wonderful Company, and it goes much further than growing pistachios, mandarins and pomegranates. 

“We are still a relatively young farmer as we didn’t get involved in agribusiness and farming until 1981,” added Cooper. However, in less than 40 years the company has developed into the largest citrus and pistachio grower in North America with annual produce sales of $1.5 billion.

The company’s philosophy is to make an impact. Since it got involved in citrus farming in the early 1980s, Wonderful Citrus has continued to grow organically and through acquisitions. “Our goal is to be a one-stop-shop for citrus,” says David Krause, President of Wonderful Citrus during an orchard tour in the Delano area last week. “Halos are our number 1 one citrus brand, but we also offer limes, lemons, blood oranges as well as grapefruit. We farm 58,000 acres of citrus, making us the largest citrus farmer in North America, if not the world.” Outside California, the company grows citrus in Texas and Mexico. In 2016, Mexico lime company I. Kunik was acquired, making Wonderful Citrus the number one lime shipper in North America. “This acquisition added stability to a vertically integrated market,” Krause said. Last year, DNE World Fruit was acquired. Only for the past 11 years, Wonderful Citrus has been selling its citrus fruit directly to retailers. 

The company has been growing pistachios and almonds since 1981 and today, owns nearly 100,000 acres of nut trees in California’s Central Valley. However, it didn’t start branding its nut products until 10 years ago. Within one decade, it has developed a dominant position within the pistachio category and 2017 Wonderful Pistachio retail sales are estimated to amount more than $900 million. Although almonds are a fraction of the company’s nut business, growing almonds is taken seriously as well. Almonds rely on bees for pollination and when significant numbers of bees started dying a few years ago, the Wonderful Company decided to take control over the pollination and acquired its own bee company in 2015, now called Wonderful bees. Each year in January, the company needs about 70,000 bee hives and today, it is about 50 percent self-sufficient. “We are the single biggest bee company in the country,” says Dr. Gordon Wardell, Director of Pollination Operations who provided bee insights during a tour of the nut facilities and orchards in Lost Hills, CA.

Wonderful nurseries is the largest table grape nursery in North America, producing vines to support the wine, table grape and raisin industries. The nursery provides table grapes from multiple breeding programs including ARRA, Sheehan Genetics, Stargrow (South Africa), ANA (Chile) as well as the California Table Grape Commission (Autumn King, Scarlet Royal and Valley Pearl). In the short term, the company doesn’t look at getting involved in growing its own table grapes. “The market is very fragmented, and it will be difficult to become a leader in this segment,” said Rob Yraceburu, President of Wonderful Orchards. During the past 20 years, the company has developed the Wonderful Pistachio rootstock tree. This cloned tree has yields that are much higher than the average tree on the block. The company has planted over 2 million of these trees and is now making them available to outside growers as well.

In addition, Wonderful became the largest player in environmentally sustainable pest control after acquiring Suterra in 2001.

What does the future hold? “We will continue to look for opportunities that align with our mission of being a leader that makes impact,” said Cooper.

Contact:

Adam Cooper

Tel: +1 (310) 966-4665