Packing & Shipping
Bravante Produce packing facility and cold storage sits on 12 acres in Reedley, California.
Our packing facility runs on a modern line with electronic blemish grading and sizing, processing between 60 to 100 bins an hour. Though our new facility is modern, the line is very simple with few turns ensuring the fruit is handled with the best care. Our facility has the maximum capacity to pack 1.75 million Navels, 400,000 Valencias, 150,000 Lemons and 50,000 Minneolas.
To insure the highest quality fruit is running over the packing line, things must start off right in the field. Our high quality portfolio with excellent varieties help guarantee great tasting fruit. Bravante Family Orchards are strategically placed throughout the Valley allowing us to pick different regions at slightly different times, insuring the most mature fruit is picked. In having a strong field department with steady work throughout the year, we can maintain our crews to insure superior picking quality. Fruit is monitored daily from bloom to picking time, to look for fruit conditions, maturity, sizes and overall general fruit appearance. Along with this, tree health and viability is monitored by our farm management team.
Superior supervisory staff, including managers and leads, is another reason we are so successful. Ken Collins, General Manager, and Miguel Perez, Packing Supervisor, have a total combined experience of 50 years in the produce business. Leads and our general workforce are selected from experience and ability to do a job well.
We receive all fruit from the fields and do an inbound quality assurance check, electronically tagging the bins or pallets with barcodes prior to pre-cooling or packing. Bravante Produce has eight high capacity forced air cooling tunnels and the ability for 18 load daily output. We can store 2,500 pallets (200,000 boxes) at any time. Our cold storage is long term grape storage capable, maintaining 0 Celsius and 90% humidity, with Dual Paradox/Honeywell cold storage controls for safety and accuracy. The cold storage is 40,000 total square feet and has 8,000 square feet of order/staging area with USDA export spec inspection tables and lighting. Take a tour below of our packing and cold storage facility.
Learn more about Ken Collins, Bravante Produce General Manager.
