David Krause is President of Paramount Citrus, Inc., the largest vertically integrated grower, packer, shipper and marketer of fresh citrus in North America. Paramount Citrus is a subsidiary of Roll International Corporation and Sister Company to Paramount Farms, Inc., the company name in which PMA Education Foundation donor recognition is given.

 

 

 

Fresh: Give us a brief description of your company.

DK: With over 50 years' experience, we farm approximately 37,000 acres of Navel oranges, Lemons, Valencia oranges, Clementine mandarins and other citrus varieties throughout California and Mexico.

Fresh: Can you describe your company's products and services a little further?

DK: Our products include Navel oranges, Lemons, Valencia oranges, Clementine mandarins, Minneolas, Pummelos, Blood oranges, and Cara Cara oranges.  Our innovative growing practices focus on cultivating the best citrus varieties. Our harvesting practices and diverse portfolio of land enables us to pick fruit at the peak of maturity without sacrificing supply. The state-of-the-art technology in our packinghouses ensures that we pack only the highest quality citrus in an efficient manner. The integration of our packinghouses with our shipping facilities, along with having the largest citrus shipping platform in North America, provides a complete logistics solution for efficient customer loading and delivery, and ensures the freshest fruit for our customers and, ultimately, consumers.

Fresh: How has your company evolved through the years to meet changing demands?

DK: Our philosophy is simple: Invest for quality. Our goal is to stay on the forefront of progressive growing, harvesting, packing and shipping techniques to meet increasingly changing customer demand for both flexibility and product quality. The food business continues to grow more competitive, and consumers have more choices about where to purchase their produce. As a result, they are more demanding putting pressure on retailers to ensure a consistent supply and consistently superior quality products for their shoppers.

An example of this investment in quality is our use of handheld technology in the field providing important data about the fruit. An experienced field evaluation team continually measures our products' internal and external characteristics such as size, color, sugar levels, sugar to acid ratios and the external quality of the fruit throughout the year. Using this handheld technology, the team provides near real-time intelligence that enables us to harvest our fruit at the optimal point of maturity, which matches the fruit to our customers' needs and guarantees a better product for them. We combine this information with our assessment of customer demand to schedule all harvest activities. Importantly, flexible production scheduling allows us to fill orders on short notice enabling us to get the best fruit to our customers when they need it – just off the tree and fresh.

Fresh: What role has human capital played in getting your company where it is today?

DK: We are very proud of our employees at Paramount Citrus.  It takes all kinds of people with a variety of talents and skills to keep us at the forefront of the industry. From those who grow and harvest the fruit to those who ensure it is delivered to our customers based on their specific needs, I can honestly say human capital is the single most important investment for quality a company can make. It makes us who we are.

Fresh: How do you see the impending talent shortage affecting our industry?

DK: A talent shortage is always a concern. Fortunately, Paramount Citrus is able to offer very competitive pay and benefits along with room for growth and a challenging career in the produce industry. That being said, we need to do our part to ensure there is a talented pool of candidates in all areas of our business to guarantee our success and future growth.

Fresh: How do you feel that your company's contribution to PMA's Education Foundation will help your company deal with this challenge?

DK: We share the Foundation's commitment to ensuring bright, motivated talent sees our industry as the exciting, multi-faceted career opportunity it truly is. Moreover, we want to play a role in providing current industry members every chance to succeed and grow. We view our contribution to the PMA Education Foundation as being consistent with the simple philosophy I mentioned earlier:  Invest for quality.