Stemilt Growers

The next time you are selecting apples from the produce section at the local grocery store, take a look at the small stickers on some of the varieties you have chosen. Chances are better than even that you will discover the image of a ladybug atop the red outline of two mountain peaks. That symbol, known throughout the world, belongs to the largest fruit growers co-operative in the state of Washington, Stemilt.

The company had surprisingly humble, albeit enterprising, beginnings roughly forty-five years ago. Founder Thomas Mathison had a small homestead on Stemilt Hill in the 1950s. He was one of many area orchardists who worked year round to take advantage of the 1800-3000 foot elevation of the Hill, which created a near-perfect climate for growing and harvesting late season sweet cherries. Once the cherries were picked, the growers from the Hill would haul their merchandise down to a local shipper in town. Though the harvest was particularly abundant during the summer of 1958, Tom Mathison returned home with less than ninety dollars in his pocket. That money was not enough to support the family. If he was neither going to give up nor sell out, Mathison had to determine why the proceeds were so poor, and whether a solution might be found. During a trip to the buyer's market, he made a startling discovery: the shiny, juicy cherries which he transported to the shipper were being sold in an acidic and dehydrated state. Mathison realized, then and there, that if his cherries were going to be protected from inadequate shipping practices, he would have to get the fruit to market by himself.

For the next few years, Mathison scrimped and saved. He purchased equipment and a small warehouse right on Stemilt Hill. At the New York Growers' auction, which took place during the harvest season of 1962, Mathison realized his initial success from improved handling and packaging procedures: the very first box of Stemilt Hill Cherries was sold. Stemilt Growers, Inc was born.

Tom Mathison's primary focus--delivering premium quality fruits to market and ensuring the highest possible return for the growers--never wavered. As he and his co-op began bringing in the harvests from farmers outside of the Stemilt Hill region, marketing and shipping strategies were refined to the point where the enterprise was fast outgrowing its small warehouse on the hill. By the time that his sons, Bob and Kyle, were old enough to assume the reigns of management, Mathison and Stemilt Growers, Inc had moved off the hill and into one of the most modern fruit facilities in the world.

The company today ranks as one of the more comprehensive, multi-faceted fruit industries in the world. Stemilt provides products and services for nearly all aspects of growing, harvesting, storing, packaging and shipping, with a concentration on three deciduous delights: apples, cherries, and pears. Many innovations and changes have occured under the auspices of Bob and Kyle Mathison, their brother in-law, Hans van Someren Greve, and their cousin David. Some of the these include:

• the company's own research and development program, begun in 1989. This has paved the way for the industry as a whole to move towards more assiduous preservation of the environment, in especial, as far as pest management. tree slavaging and fertilizing techniques are concerned.

• hiring professionally trained horticulturists and agriculture specialists. Such distinct field staff members help to manage more than 10,000 acres of fruit grown in Stemilt's orchards.

• the introduction of controlled atmosphere storage rooms which are smaller than those of other packing houses. Stemilt's CA rooms vary in size, from the smallest, which secures a 16,000 carton capacity (or 800 bins), to those which contain a 60,000 carton capacity (3000 bins). Smaller CA rooms mean that the fruit can be loaded into them more quickly.

• the acquisition of Chief Wenatchee, in September, 2001. For more than fifty years, Chief Wenatchee was a fruit-packing institution in the Valley. Replete with controlled atmosphere storage and high quality packaging, the assets of Chief Wenatchee have helped Stemilt to expand its own custom-packing division. Because Stemilt maintains some of the world's most technologically advanced installations, the company is now able to employ such praxis at the former Chief Wenatchee facility. The ability to manufacture select packaging, which comports to the precise needs of each and every client, provides to Stemilt growers the best return for their products.

• a pullulating export program. With approximately forty percent of its fruit delivered to overseas markets within the last couple of years, Stemilt is reaping the benefits of the free-trade legislation passed by Congress in the late 1990s. Markets include Latin America, Eastern and Western Europe, Scandinavia, England, three countries in the Middle East: Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, India, the Far East, Japan, Australia, and the Pacific port city of Vladivostok. Stemilt's quality control shipping practices accommodate roughly 350 fruit growers in the northwestern United States.