MBG Marketing – The Blueberry People has held a grand opening ceremony for its new fresh and value-added Blueberry facility in Alma, Georgia.
More than 250 people attended the event, from grower-members, business and community leaders, and local and state dignitaries including Peggy Murphy, Mayor of Alma and Georgia State House Representative Chad Nimmer, as well as MBG and Naturipe Staff.
Alma is home to the second Individually Quick Frozen (IQF) value-added processing and packing facility owned and operated by MBG; the first was opened in Bloomingdale, Michigan in 2013.
“The Alma Facility will enhance our ability to quickly process berries for our growers in Georgia and Florida and will serve as a back-up facility to our growers in our other regions” said Larry Ensfield, COO of MBG Marketing. “This new facility is over 73,000 square feet, with a capacity of 18,000 pounds per hour, making it the largest blueberry IQF facility in the southeast US.
'We are using the latest technologies to sort, wash and then freeze the berries in a state-of-the-art IQF tunnel,' he added. 'Here, the berries are individually frozen to -10°F degrees in less than 6 minutes to preserve the flavour, nutrients, colour and integrity of the blueberries. Additional inspections and sorting takes place before they are packed into bulk containers for foodservice and ingredient buyers or poly bags for retail consumers packs.”
The facility also contains a large fresh blueberry distribution center, to service the Naturipe Farms customer base across North America. Current capacity is for more than 10m pounds of fresh berries during the southeast growing season, with room to expand to match the anticipated growth in production in the region.
Berry specialist Naturipe Farms, formed in 2000, is a partnership between MBG Marketing, Hortifrut SA, Naturipe Berry Growers and Munger Farms.
