Chelan Fruit, the nation's largest and oldest cooperative apple shipper, has greatly expanded its shipping and receiving docks to improve quality control and efficiency as it keeps pace with increasing production and sales. The company's fruit is marketed by Chelan Fresh Marketing, which ships more than 12 million packs of Washington apples, pears and cherries annually.
The new docks, located at Chelan Fruit's facilities in Chelan, Wa., allow the company to ship twice the amount of fruit it previously could ship in a day. But the real advantage, said Assistant General Manager Jim Divis, is the company's improved ability to oversee and control fruit quality.
"The real payback is the reduction in repacking and rejected fruit and an increase in customer satisfaction," Divis said. "It means better quality for our customers day in and day out."
The $4 million project expanded Chelan Fruit's domestic sales shipping dock from four to nine bays accessing a 250,000-box inventory. All inventory is now available at one location using push-back racks to access boxes of fruit on three levels. Radio frequency identification is used to locate, access information about and track every pallet of fruit. The facility and technology allows the company to ship precisely the right fruit in terms of variety, quality and age to a specific customer.
Chelan Fruit also added a three-bay receiving dock on the back side of its new shipping facility to maintain its inventory with shipments from its other warehouses located in Chelan and Brewster and purchased fruit from other warehouses. Divis said the separate receiving dock allows inventory to be replenished without slowing down shipments to customers. The facility includes a new shipping office and truckers lounge.
The company's former four-bay shipping dock with its 150,000-box inventory has also been retained to focus on international export shipments. The combined capacity of racked radio frequency identified fruit is 400,000 packed boxes.
Also new is a three-bay cross dock in Wenatchee that allows customers and truckers to consolidate their pickups with additional shipments. A trucker can now pick up several products at one location, rather than making several stops for a single pallet to fill out a load.
"It can be something we sell, but it can also be anything grown in Washington," said Steve Terry, Chelan Fresh CEO. "With the price of fuel these days, this enables us to offer a real service to our customers."
"It's all part of providing our customers with one-stop shopping 52 weeks a year," Divis said.
Chelan Fresh
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