Sunkist Growers held its 124th annual meeting recently, where president and CEO Russ Hanlin confirmed that the cooperative had seen record member payments in 2017.
“Careful and well-orchestrated management of last year’s crops, along with coordinated sales and marketing strategies, allowed us to achieve steady movement and strong pricing in 2017,”he noted. “Last season’s performance resulted in record member payments of nearly US$1.2bn dollars, the highest in our history.”
According to Hanlin, Sunkist’s leadership has been diligently focused on executing key strategic initiatives to maintain industry leadership and competitive returns to grower members.
In addition to achieving these objectives, the management of Sunkist and Fruit Growers Supply (FGS) was consolidated to improve fiscal performance and best serve the constituencies of both organisations.
“Sunkist’s board and management continues to proactively evaluate opportunities to maximise efficiencies within the organisation,” said Gerald Denni, who was re-elected as chairman of Sunkist’s board of directors during the meeting. “The management consolidation of Sunkist and FGS underway has been positive, and we are very optimistic about the synergistic benefits that this shared services model will afford both companies moving forward.
“We have tremendous optimism for the future of the Sunkist cooperative,” said Denni. “We have made many positive organisational changes, and also gained significant acreage last year that will further establish Sunkist as the leader in the fresh citrus industry.”
