___________________________________________________________________________________ Pacific

Coast Producers

Paul knows the operations inside and out. He’ s spent over 20 years with Pacific Coast, working his way up through production and plant leadership roles before taking the lead on operations for the whole cooperative. Now, he’ s responsible for everything from production performance and quality to safety, capacity planning, and process improvement.

Even with similar systems, the integration required serious teamwork. Adding new branded volumes meant aligning production, planning, logistics, sales, and supply chain teams. Paul sums up the challenge:“ At the end of the day, bringing on a brand like Del Monte takes people and a dedicated team working together to manage all the details.”

Family farmers

Paul highlights the importance of ownership. Unlike many food manufacturers, Pacific Coast is owned by about 160 family farms, directly linking the business to the growers who supply it. Although it is structured and run like a corporation, grower ownership is at the heart of Pacific Coast’ s approach to responsibility, investment, and long-term planning.“ Our business is owned by family farmers – real, hardworking, regular people. There’ s a unity and closeness here with everyone who works at Pacific Coast Producers. We are all in it together. That’ s what drives our success and defines our culture,” Paul shares.

Pacific Coast continues to invest as it grows. Some projects boost throughput and quality, while others improve resource use and develop better processes. It all comes back to a philosophy of steady, continuous improvement, not big overnight changes.

Paul puts it simply:“ Everything we do aims to add value for our growers, our customers, to make life better for our employees, or move us toward sustainability.”

Over the past 25 years, our partnership with Pacific Coast Producers( PCP) has delivered several world firsts. We are immensely proud of this enduring association, which is driven by a shared purpose: to continuously elevate productivity and product quality. Together, we are not afraid to take calculated risks. We innovate, work hard, and deliver tangible results.

A standout milestone of this journey is our collaborative development of proprietary technology, which culminated in building a state-of-the-art fruit cup production facility. Furthermore, our resilience was put to the test during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, when we successfully executed the rebuilding of the Lodi peach cannery under extraordinary global challenges. We followed this by delivering the complete replacement of the Woodland tomato brite stacking warehouse, further modernizing PCP’ s operational footprint.

Our relationship is anchored in mutual respect for each other’ s expertise and a deep trust built over decades. This solid foundation creates an ideal environment for intensive, in-depth collaboration. It is within this collaborative space that true breakthroughs happen.

As a machinery supplier, we have grown alongside PCP, aligning our technological advancements with their evolving production needs. This quarter-century of shared success is a testament to what can be achieved when a supplier and a producer unite under a vision of continuous improvement. We look forward to engineering the future of food processing together. ■

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