*
IN THIS ISSUE:
LIFE DOESN’T JUST HAND YOU LEMONS…
IT TAKES VISION
MORRISON SNAPSHOTS
Vision, foresight, and strategic thinking
Check out some our latest adventures.
have long been Ventura Pacific hallmarks. The company pioneered the packing of lemons in cardboard cartons of 38-pound increments in the 1950s, at a time when hard-to-handle
80-pound
wooden
crates were the standard. Over the years, Ventura Pacific has adopted mechanized fruit receiving and cleaning processes along with electronic technologies that
STRATEGIC PLANNING Principals Shawn Miller and Toni Scott share highlights of successful strategic planning performed for some of our clients.
sort incoming lemons by size, color, and On July 1, 1941, Carl Samuelson and John Davies held their breath and signed a lease
now be utilized at high efficiency.
California, that was believed to have been
It has been said that yellow, not green, is
lease,” Samuelson said, “and we had to borrow $1,000 of it!”
attack on Pearl Harbor brought the United States into World War II – arguably not the
Brent
Morrison
most opportune time for two citrus novices and
Geoff
Chinnock break down the challenges of borrowing for your business.
storage
lemon growers who reorganized as Ventura County Lemon Cooperative, a growerDoing
for
holding
yet still be harvested at a size in line with
also
provides
for
handling
and
marketing year-round, as do the climates
selling the business to a group of California
enterprise.
allows
lemons to color naturally for up to 150 days
It
handling and marketing.
business
as
now markets as one of the largest lemon producers for Sunkist, the well-known
WWW.MORRISONCO.NET
controlled
succeeded, becoming innovators in citrus
Ventura Pacific Company, the company
See what’s new with some of our clients.
a grapefruit. Temperature and humidity
what buyers require.
owned
CLIENT CORNER
Buyers want yellow lemons but those left
to be entering a new venture. But they
Samuelson and Davies retired in 1976,
*
the color of money in the lemon business. to color on the tree can grow to the size of
It was less than six months before the
Morrison’s
challenge for California food handlers, can
on a citrus packinghouse in Montalvo, built in 1888. “It cost us $1,050 to sign the
WISE BORROWING
quality at dizzying speeds. Labor, always a
citrus marketing organization owned by grower cooperatives like Ventura Pacific.
in the regions farmed by Ventura Pacific’s members. Today, the company’s members grow lemons in Ventura County, Monterey County, the San Joaquin Valley, and the California and Arizona desert regions. Headquartered in Oxnard, California, the cooperative operates a 220,000 square foot handling and storage facility there in
CONTINUED ON INSIDE LEFT PANEL
NEWSLETTER | SUMMER 2019