Coastline Family Farms, a western vegetable grower/shipper based in California, announced the formation of a new dry onion growing and packing joint venture with Madison Ranches located in Echo, Oregon. The new venture will be named Madison-Cox Onions, LLC.
Larry Cox, the CEO and grower/owner of Coastline said “My family has been growing red, yellow and white dry onions in the Imperial Valley of California for over 35 years. With the dynamics of the produce marketplace, we wanted to consolidate our onion sales under the Coastline Family Farms structure and develop an all year-round onion program on the west coast. We have known the Madison family for some time. They have a reputation for producing high quality premium onions in the Hermiston region of Oregon and knew they would be the right partner to help expand our production footprint.”
Cox family
“Larry, myself, and our teams began discussing working together in the Pacific Northwest last fall. We are very excited about the opportunity to put together a quality oriented, year-round onion program,” said Jake Madison, a 4th generation farmer and CEO of Madison Ranches. “Our two family farming companies are very similar which helps build a strong foundation of trust, shared values and a focus on a customer-centric business model”.
The Madison-Cox Onions joint venture will produce red and yellow bulb onions in Hermiston, Oregon with the first harvest in September 2019 and shipping through March of 2020. Madison Ranches will be responsible for the production, storage, packing and shipping for the new venture. “We started construction this week on our new packing and storage facility which will feature a state-of-the-art, optical grading, sorting and packing line, capable of meeting the needs of our clients with onion bags ranging from 10-50lb. We focused the design on automation and state of the art equipment in order to deliver a premium product to our customers,” added Jonathan Miller, General Manager of the Madison-Cox Onions joint venture.
Madison family
“Coastline Family Farms will handle the sales and marketing for the joint venture.” said Tonya Giotta, Vice President for Foodservice Sales. The onion and vegetable sales veteran is joined by Carly Kwak-Bauch, Vice President of Product and Channel Development, both women previously worked together at River Point Farms and were tapped by Coastline to develop a new dry onion business unit. “The addition of the Madison-Cox joint venture in Oregon, gives Coastline a year-round, integrated west coast supply base. This enables us to provide national and regional foodservice operators, distributors, wholesalers and retail clients with a consistent year-round supply of premium dry onions.” added Tonya.
For more information:
Robert Verloop
Coastline Family Farms
Ph: +1 (831) 755-1430
robertv@coastlinefamilyfarms.com
www.coastlinefamilyfarms.com