While many companies might feel content to rest on their laurels after reaching 75 years in business, it is the company that is innovative and focused on the needs and wants of its customers that continues to reap success. Currently celebrating its diamond anniversary, Ocean Spray Cranberries Inc., based in Middleboro, MA, is preparing for its next 75 years with several new products and three new additions to its senior management team to ensure that it succeeds. "We are relaunching the cranberry to America," said Kenneth Romanzi, who for the last year has served as senior vice president and

STOCKTON, CA -- Onions Etc. Inc., based here, is expanding sales of its butter baby potatoes with the Albertson's supermarket chain to include servicing Albertson's supermarket stores in the San Francisco Bay area. Onions Etc. already services about 200 Albertson's stores in the Los Angeles area. "We've been doing well in Los Angeles," said Derrell Kelso Jr., co-founder, president and salesman for Onions Etc. "We're always looking for something new & to grow people's sales." Onions Etc. also sells its potatoes in some Cub Foods stores in Minnesota. The company has enjoyed a dramatic surge in

Salt Lake City, UT-based Dan's Foods, a member of Associated Food Stores' independent retailer-owned warehouse services based in Salt Lake City, will not just be making a "Cameo" appearance in the Guinness Book of World Records. It is also helping the Muscular Dystrophy Association with $5,000 which it and Oneonta-Starr Ranch Growers of Wenatchee, WA, raised as part of a recent World's Largest Cameo Apple Display. Dan's Foods' Salt Lake City store located on South Wasatch Boulevard, arranged for trucks deliver more than 181,000 Cameo apples produced by Oneonta-Starr Ranch Growers, and team

Senior Vice President James Mills announced that he will leave family-owned, Salinas-based grower-shipper Mills Family Farms, effective Jan. 1. With his 50th birthday approaching, Mr. Mills has decided to pursue some personal goals and dreams. He declined to comment on the specifics of those plans other than to say that he and his wife would take a long motor coach trip to Alaska in the near future. He will continue to serve as a consultant to the company. Along with his brother, Dave, and sister, Susan, Jim Mills represents the second generation to have a long-term involvement in the company

Within the next few months, the Vancouver, BC-based Oppenheimer Group will gain additional greenhouse pepper distribution as the result of increased volume from Divemex. Divemex, the produce marketer's Mexican pepper grower, has more than doubled the size of its Etzatlan facility, planting over 36 new acres under glass since early 2005. Divemex Chief Executive Officer Luis de Saracho said that he anticipates this winter's yield to surpass the 2004-05 crop by roughly 60 percent. "By adding production in Etzatlan, we can begin our harvest two months earlier," Mr. de Saracho said. "We began

REEDLEY, CA -- It was in the spring of 1955, half a century ago this year, that Jim Ito and his wife, Yukiko Ito, started a small tree fruit packing operation here with fruit from their own 14-acre ranch as well as some of their neighbors. It began with a hand-packing operation off "a little belt," Yukiko Ito told The Produce News in a recent interview. They were what was known at the time as "shade tree packers," she said, and the workers visually graded and sized the fruit as they picked it off the belt. That was the beginning of Ito Packing Co. Inc., which has grown to become one of the