OPERATIONS
Sunny Valley’s outstanding and experienced operations team is at the forefront of our quality assurance efforts. Every grower we partner with has a track-record of packing premium quality fruit. Our team here oversees custom repacks and product inspection
to ensure that our customers are only receiving the best quality product at time of final shipment from our warehouse.
FOOD SAFETY
Sunny Valley’s grower network adheres to industry-leading food safety practices. Additionally, our operations team provides food safety support for all of our grower-partners. Sunny Valley has been very proactive in the area of food safety. We provide assistance to our domestic grower and packer partners for their written programs as well as with their self-auditing protocols. All farms are third-party audited for good agricultural practices (GAPs) and all facilities are third-party audited for good manufacturing practices (GMPs). Sunny Valley works very closely with all our domestic grower and packer partners to continually improve food safety programs and to keep them up to date with industry standards and requirements. The exporters that we work with in Chile and Argentina operate under the good agricultural practice's programs developed in Chile. These programs also include third-party audits. All of the products that we market are inventoried in Sunny Valley’s accounting system
which allows for full traceability of products.
QUALITY ASSURANCE
Sunny Valley management and staff have extensive industry experience in fruit and vegetable production, harvest management, packing, packaging, post harvest handling, quality standards, and other issues related to product quality, condition, and shelf-life. Quality assurance programs are tailored for each of our products with the primary objective of maintaining up to date knowledge of quality issues and of shipping high quality product to
our customers.
The backbone of our quality assurance program is partnering with quality, progressive-minded growers, packers, shippers, and exporters. These partners not only understand the importance
of formal quality assurance measures but also strive to continually improve their quality assurance programs.
DISTRIBUTION FACILITY
Sunny Valley distributes fresh fruit and vegetable products throughout the eastern U.S. and Canada. Sunny Valley also has distribution of our imported fresh blueberries into the western U.S. and Canada. Shipping points for our eastern stone fruit program include Monetta, South Carolina; Elmer, New Jersey; and Glassboro, New Jersey.
Shipping points for our New Jersey blueberry program include multiple facilities in the Hammonton, New Jersey area and Glassboro,
New Jersey. Major shipping points for our imported programs include Miami, FL; Glassboro, NJ; Gloucester, NJ; Philadelphia, PA; and Wilmington, DE.
TECHNOLOGY
Sunny Valley International and our grower and packer partners have embraced the use of new technologies that result in operational efficiencies, better products, safer products, and better communications. Some examples of the
technologies embraced include: electronic size sorters for peach packing, computer controlled soft and color sorters for blueberry packing, GS1 PLU Databars for peaches, 2D codes for blueberry clamshell traceability, automated lot coding of boxes, computerized trace-back and trace-forward software, various EDI and web-based customer accounting interfaces, and web product updates. Sunny Valley will continue to embrace technologies and to work with our partner companies to consider the adoption of
viable technologies.