Sunset aims high with new berry deal

ORLANDO, FL—Mastronardi Produce Ltd. has ambitious plans for its newly-expanded berry deal.

The Kingsville, Ontario-based company isn’t just aiming to be a player, but one of the largest.

“We want to be the No. 2 player in berries in the next five years,” said Dean Taylor, director of sales and commodity planning.

The company hopes to accomplish this through a new joint venture with United Kingdom-based BerryWorld, which started Sept. 1. Taylor said the companies met a few years ago, when Mastronardi Produce first started marketing its Wow Berries greenhouse-grown strawberries.

“At the moment we were expanding our berries beyond strawberries, which is quite difficult when you don’t have proprietary genetics,” Taylor said. “At Sunset, we have always been about flavor.”

Through the joint venture, Sunset has access to BerryWorld’s proprietary varieties, and is planning a phased roll-out of the entire berry patch.

It’s been a learning curve to go into the field for the greenhouse grower.

“Berries aren’t like growing tomatoes where you drop a seed and a couple of months later you have a tomato,” Taylor said. “With berries, it’s a long cycle.”

The company is starting with Wow Berries strawberries and will move into blueberries, raspberries and eventually blackberries, anticipated in about two years.

Fresh Summit 2018 was the official unveiling, and so far people were…wow’d.

“It sounds corny because we market our premium berries as Wow Berries, but that’s what we get when people are tasting them…’Wow,’” he said.