Paramount Citrus has opened a new citrus packinghouse,which will offer seedless E-Z peel Cuties California Mandarins.
The 640,000ft2 facility is expected to cater to the demand for small fruit in the US.
Paramount Citrus and its partners packed and shipped about 60 million boxes of Cuties in the last season and that number is expected to reach 90 million this year.The Cuties facility will have the capacity to process 4,000 bins of fruit daily and is expected to create 500 jobs.
The company expects the shipments to reach 140 million boxes within less than five years.
Paramount Citrus president David Krause said that the company has planted numerous Cuties trees over the past several years and the consumption and demand have consistently increased.
"We need this facility to handle all the new volume coming on line,"Krause said.
Cuties is a joint venture between Paramount Citrus,Sun Pacific and Fowler Packing.
