- Sunsweet Growers
Sunsweet Growers Incorporated is an
agricultural marketing cooperative founded in 1917 as the "California Prune and Apricot Growers Association". Sunsweet is headquartered inYuba City, California , USA where,as of 2007 , the company operated the largestdried fruit plant in the world. [http://www.sunsweet.com/about]Products
Sunsweet manufactures a variety of dried fruit and juice products, although it is best known for prunes. The company produces and distributes prunes, cranberries, apricots, nectarines, pineapples, mangoes and dates. Other recent Sunsweet products include Ones (individually-wrapped prunes), Jumbo Red Raisins (from large red flame Chilean grapes), PlumSweets (chocolate-covered prunes),
PlumSmart plum juice, and Specialty mangoes, blueberries, cherries, and berry blends.Prune Market Domination
USA
40,000 cases of fruit are marked and sealed for distribution daily at the factory headquarters while its juice products are bottled in
Fleetwood, Pennsylvania . [http://www.sunsweet.com/about] Over Half the growers in California belong to Sunsweet.Worldwide
The company controls more than two-thirds(2/3) of the prune market worldwide. [http://www.careersinfood.com/index.cfm/fuseaction/ShowResourcesLinkDetails/ResourceLinkID/6699/Sunsweet_Growers_Inc.htm]
Chile & France
In Santa Cruz, Chile, in 2004 after the two consecutive years of crop disaster in
California , Sunsweet completed a prune drying facility where it made plans to grow and process the dried fruit in an attempt to avert any future disaster says. [http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-146383587.html] The entire U.S. exports about 48% of prunes worldwide while the two major competitors, Chile produces 13% (partially due to the Sunsweet facility and growing) and France only about 12%. [http://aic.ucdavis.edu/profiles/Prunes-2005.pdf] These statistics are greatly affected by Sunsweet's production.External links
* [http://www.sunsweet.com Sunsweet website]
* [http://www.PlumSmart.net PlumSmart website]
* [http://www.californiadriedplums.org California Dried Plum Board]
* [http://www.tummywise.com Tummy Wise] provides digestive health information
* [http://www.digestivehealthorg.com Digestive Health Organization]
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