In FY2021, with an ever-growing volume of citrus marketed because of our summer import programs, we focused on innovation with a number of technological updates in the packinghouse while also looking at new innovative solutions for storage space as we reached our facility’s max capacity. The addition of new H-2A packers to our operations team continued to help us serve the high demand for citrus due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Fortunately, new COVID-19 safety protocols in the packinghouse have not been a hindrance to our operation in any way.

In FY2020, we had a number of new additions to our packinghouse, and in FY2021, we duplicated those additions. Those new additions include dual GIRO High-Speed Mesh baggers, each capable of seven different bag styles and upgradeable to a total of ten. They each have production rates of 36 bags per minute, totaling 72 bags per minute. We also added an additional GIRO 12 Scale Static Weigher to our facility. Ideal for large fruit up to 120mm, this tool has production rates of up to 56 deliveries per minute. These new additions increase our daily output up to 100K consumer packs per day.

Dayana is an H-2A packer who has been with the team for three seasons.

Two groups of H-2A workers joined us at IMG Citrus in FY2021. One group worked at the packinghouse operations and the other group assisted with harvesting at the Happy Food Grove. At the packinghouse, we had a total of 24 H-2A workers join us from October 5th to March 19th. Their duties included sorting and packing fruit according to grade, color, and size by hand or with mechanized equipment. For FY2022, we are expanding our H-2A packinghouse team to a total of 28 workers. These teams are a pivotal piece of our success at IMG Citrus as they bring positive, motivated, and reliable work.

"...[We] intend to build a new refrigerated storage facility for FY2022. The new facility will be built at our J5 grove site. This site gives us direct frontage access to SR60, linking the most popular freight routes including I-95 and Florida’s Turnpike...The new facility will host 3,118 pallet storage positions."

While we have not reached any capacity limitations for our Florida-grown citrus portion of our business, summer import volumes continue to increase annually. Because we maximized the number of imports we can handle at our current facility, we are in the planning stages for a new site to facilitate aggressive growth. Moreover, due to the acquisition of the Imagine Grove, we also have an increase in total Florida units to handle compared to the previous season. In FY2021, we performed a feasibility study in light of this overall increase in total units. This study reviewed the expansion of our refrigerated storage and bagging equipment at other locations, because we had already used all of our opportunities to expand onsite. We have since concluded our feasibility study and intend to build a new refrigerated storage facility for FY2022. The new facility will be built at our J5 grove site. This site gives us direct frontage access to SR60, linking the most popular freight routes including I-95 and Florida’s Turnpike while simultaneously moving us away from the urban growth and traffic issues within the current service area. The new facility will host 3,018 pallet storage positions. For reference, our current capacity is less than 1,000 pallets. The design is future growth-friendly with phase 1 of potentially 4 phases.

In FY2022, we plan to continue focusing on the future of our significant volume increases of citrus, and the new refrigerated storage facility will be a vital aspect of the management process.

This article was written with contributions from Todd Haffield, Director of Packinghouse Operations.