We pride ourselves in bringing the best lemons to market and do so by upholding high standards in all facets of our operations. The procedures described below will help you better understand our operations.
After receiving fruit from the fields, our lemons are washed and scrubbed thoroughly using a gentle soap and chlorinated water. Then, food-grade storage wax is then applied to prevent shrinkage and preserve quality. Next, the lemons are sorted. We use Sunsort® grading technology developed by the Sunkist, a leader in optical lemon-grading equipment. After stringent inspection, the lemons are then grouped by size and grade and sent to storage.
Once the fruit is market ready, it is delivered from storage to be washed and rinsed a second time and receives an application of food-grade pack wax designed to safeguard the lemon during transit. The fruit is passed through a second set of optical lemon-grading equipment and is examined by skilled employees for quality. The fruit is then sized and placed into packaging tailored to our customers’ orders.
STORAGE
While in storage, the fruit is kept at 50-52 degrees F with 90-95% relative humidity. High volumes of air fill the lemon storage rooms, where they develop their flavorful, bright yellow color before being packed.packaging tailored to our customers’ orders.
Once placed into the proper packaging, the lemons are palletized and placed into pre-coolers set between 40-45 degrees before being loaded into trucks arranged by Sunkist. From there, our fruit is transported to the various domestic and international markets.
Our top priority at Saticoy Lemon is the health and safety of our consumers. The Food Safety Program we have in place ensures the safest and highest quality fruit leaves our facilities. Saticoy Lemon employees receive training in food safety and safe handling procedures.
We are strong advocates within the citrus industry for improving food safety initiatives. Our commitment promises to use every resource possible to ensure the highest quality, cleanest, safest and most wholesome fruit in the world.
Food safety is taken very seriously at Saticoy Lemon, and accordingly we have invested the time and resources to make it a reality. We pride ourselves in growing, harvesting and packing the freshest and highest quality fruit. This is why we comply with Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI) which sets forth standards in food safety requirements along the entire food supply chain to cover scopes such as growing, packaging, and distribution.
We follow Good Manufacturing Practices (GMPs), guidelines established by the federal government, daily in our state of the art processing plants. Our packing houses undergo and pass annual audits by a certified third party auditor.
Our fruit arrives at our processing plants and is cleaned and disinfected eliminating field contaminants. Our traceability program allows us to trace our fruit from the grower to receiver in case of a recall event. This assures that only safe fruit leaves our facilities.