Sunsweet Growers Incorporated is an agricultural marketing cooperative founded in 1917 as the California Prune and Apricot Growers Association. Sunsweet is headquartered in Yuba City, California

Yuba City, California

Yuba City is a Northern California city, founded in 1849. It is the county seat of Sutter County, California, United States. The population was 64,925 at the 2010 census....

, USA. The company operates the largest dried fruit

Dried fruit

Dried fruit is fruit where the majority of the original water content has been removed either naturally, through sun drying, or through the use of specialized dryers or dehydrators. Dried fruit has a long tradition of use dating back to the fourth millennium BC in Mesopotamia, and is prized...

 plant in the world. http://www.sunsweet.com/about

Products

Sunsweet manufactures a variety of dried fruit and juice products, although it is best known for prunes. The company produces and distributes prunes, cranberries, apricots, nectarines, pineapples, mangoes and dates. Other recent Sunsweet products include Ones (individually-wrapped prunes), Jumbo Red Raisins (from large red flame Chilean grapes), PlumSweets (chocolate-covered prunes), PlumSmart plum juice, and Specialty mangoes, blueberries, cherries, and berry blends.

USA

40,000 cases of fruit are marked and sealed for distribution daily at the factory headquarters while its juice products are bottled in Fleetwood, Pennsylvania

Fleetwood, Pennsylvania

Fleetwood is a borough in Berks County, Pennsylvania, United States. The population was 4,085 at the 2010 census. It was home to the Fleetwood Metal Body company, an automobile coachbuilder purchased by Fisher Body and integrated into General Motors in 1931...

.http://www.sunsweet.com/about
Over half the growers in California belong to Sunsweet.

Worldwide

The company controls more than two-thirds(2/3) of the prune market worldwide.http://www.careersinfood.com/index.cfm/fuseaction/ShowResourcesLinkDetails/ResourceLinkID/6699/Sunsweet_Growers_Inc.htm

Chile & France

In Santa Cruz, Chile, in 2004 after the two consecutive years of crop disaster in California

California

California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...

, Sunsweet completed a prune drying facility where it made plans to grow and process the dried fruit in an attempt to avert any future disaster says.http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-146383587.html The entire U.S. exports about 48% of prunes worldwide while the two major competitors, Chile produces 13% (partially due to the Sunsweet facility and growing) and France only about 12%.http://aic.ucdavis.edu/profiles/Prunes-2005.pdf These statistics are greatly affected by Sunsweet's production.

External links

• Sunsweet website

• PlumSmart website

• California Dried Plum Board

• Tummy Wise provides digestive health information

• Digestive Health Organization