CMI Opens New Cherry Facility

Columbia Marketing International, Inc. (CMI) is focused on providing the highest quality cherries to its domestic and international customers and is putting major investments toward this goal. To this end, the Wenatchee, WA-headquartered CMI, one of Washington State’s largest growers, packagers and shippers of apples, pears and cherries, built three new cherry packing lines in the past two years. Columbia Fruit Packers and Double Diamond, two of CMI’s six independently-owned grower-packers, put new cherry lines into operation last year. On June 1, McDougall & Sons opened its 82,000-square foot operation. This new plant, which is attached to a 450,000-square foot apple packing line completed in late 2014, is nearly 550,000-square feet (or 10 football fields in size) and is state-of-the-art.

“What often happens is that new cherry lines are built to replace old lines and therefore must be designed to fit into an existing facility,” explains Steve Lutz, CMI’s vice president of marketing. “McDougall started with bare dirt, so they could maximize all aspects of the facility design, both in the building itself as well as the sorting and packaging equipment. The project broke ground at this time last year and was completed a few weeks ago.”

The cherry lines in the new McDougal & Sons facility were designed, built and installed by Unitec, Inc., a company headquartered in Cotignola, Italy, and known to install top-of-the-line apple and cherry lines worldwide. The red cherry line has a 20-lane sorter/sizer that can run approximately 14 tons of cherries per hour, while a dedicated Rainier cherry line runs 4 to 5 tons of fruit hourly. The Rainier line can also run red cherries, if needed. Cameras are used to optically sort the fruit by taking more than a dozen photos of each cherry, therefore defects can be sorted out by computer rather than relying on the human eye. Sizing is incredibly accurate enabling CMI to create a very consistent pack.

“The benefit for retailers is that we can guarantee a very consistent, clean pack. We know that with computerized grading and sorting, defects will be removed from the pack and the sizing will be exactly what a retailer orders. In addition, we have more flexibility on package type so retailers can get the pack that works best for them. Growers benefit because they get paid based on fruit quality and fruit size. With a very accurate packing line, we can make sure that grower returns are based on the quality of the fruit they bring to the warehouse,” says Lutz.

Bryan McDougall, an owner of McDougall & Sons describes the new facility as “awesome.” McDougall says, “It is revolutionizing how we deliver cherries to our customers.”

For more information, visit: www.cmiapples.com

Source: PerishableNews.com