Mission Produce
Mission is a large Avocado packer in Oxnard that literally is bursting at the seams due to worldwide demand. They currently pack over one million pounds of Avocados per day for an annual total of 500 million avocados. A new facility under construction that we visited will have 4 times the capacity of the current facility.
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| Mission Avocado in Oxnard, CA |
We were greeted by the Vice President of Engineering and also an Engineer from Process Improvement. Both gentleman said they had degrees in Mechanical Engineering which is understandable after seeing the complexity involved in processing over a million Avocados per day.
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| VP of Engineering who was our Host holds a netted bag of Avocados destined for Costco |
Avocados arrive in flat bed trucks. Each white container contains 950 pounds of Avocados.
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| Avocados to be packed |
The containers are loaded from the truck into a hydro washer where a cold 45 degree brine solution serves to rapidly cool the container and wash dust and other contaminants from the fruit.
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| Hydro Washer |
Avocado Sorter
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| Avocado Sizing |
Once sorted by size, Avocados are boxed and each individual box weighed and bar coded.
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| Avocado Weighing station |
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| Weighed and barcoded |
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| Avocados being packaged for Costco |
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| Bins of washed and graded fruit ready for packing |
International
Mission supplies Avocados worldwide. Here crates of fruit are banded for shipping to Japan.
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| Preparing pallet for shipping by boat to Japan |
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| Transit times for Ocean crossing |
Packed fruit in the shipping warehouse is kept cool waiting for pickup by truck.
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| Shipping Cooler |
Construction
Mission purchased the former USPS sorting facility in Oxnard and nuked it. They are in the process of building a 4 story building to quadruple their processing capability.
We visited the construction site and viewed the staged materials ready to be assembled erector set style. Mission hopes to be up and running by June 2014.
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| Large Footings heavily reinforced |
