Walnut Processors
A Historic Commitment To Quality
When Don Barton left his native California after earning an MBA in Agribusiness, he cut his marketing teeth at some of the finest food marketing companies in America — including Ocean Spray Cranberries, Inc. and The H.J. Heinz Corporation. But he also told his brothers that, if they ever needed marketing help, they should give him a call.
That call came in the late summer of 2002 after Brent Barton had spoken to his neighbor, Joe Gambini. Mr. Gambini wanted to determine the Bartons' interest in taking over the management of his walnut shelling and packing operation. Brent called Don to see if he was interested in leaving his career in packaged goods marketing to head up the potential new venture. After visiting the operation and learning more about the opportunity from his brothers and Mr. Gambini, Don and his wife, Jan, decided to move from the East Coast back to California to launch the family's new business – GoldRiver Orchards.
Don and the rest of the family immediately recognized that maintaining the Barton family heritage of uncompromising quality has, and always will be, the Company's highest priority – despite the unique challenges that are encountered with rapid growth. You can rely on the fact that the objectives set for GoldRiver Orchards walnut processing meet or exceed the industry's highest standards for excellence.
GoldRiver Orchards operates under strict HACCP guidelines that are documented and tracked daily. All of our outgoing shipments are graded and certified by the American Council for Food Safety and Quality. This organization (formerly known as the California Dried Fruit Association) serves under the auspices of the United States Department of Agriculture as the official enforcement agency of the industry's grades and standards.
While all of GoldRiver's shipments receive the ACFSQ certification for quality, GoldRiver has set a much higher quality standard (please refer to our specification sheets for each product under the “Materials” section). For example, what many packers consider “high spec” material is routinely packed by GoldRiver Orchards as its standard pack. This commitment to quality includes a series of rigorous checks before each bin of walnuts is passed to the next step in our processing procedure.
All product is cleaned, sorted, passed through magnets and metal detection equipment, and is sampled and analyzed the day it is packed to ensure that our quality standards are being met. And until those standards are met, nothing leaves our plant. After all, every box has our family name on it – a consistent reminder that we must live up to our heritage of quality and excellence.
GoldRiver will process its seventh crop in 2010-11. Both domestically and internationally, the Company continues to maintain and enhance its reputation for outstanding product quality. This has been achieved through an extensive investment in upgrades to the inherited Gambini family plant, new technological innovations in electronic sorting, additional shelling capacity, complete refurbishment of the Company's cold storage room, a complete refurbishment of the packaging and hand-sorting room, the erection of one of only 14 USDA-certified fumigation chambers in California, and additional storage capacity to handle GoldRiver's ever-expanding walnut crop.
In addition to production from the Barton Ranch, GoldRiver Orchards also purchases walnuts from a select group of neighboring growers from the San Joaquin Valley of California. Some of these highly valued relationships were inherited from the Gambini Farms era. Many others have been recruited since the transition to GoldRiver Orchards. They all have one thing in common: they consistently deliver outstanding field quality walnuts to GoldRiver.
Although the USA is the Company's largest single market, GoldRiver Orchards exports the majority of its products to markets in the Far East, Europe, the Middle East, Australia, and South America. In the past few years, the Company has made significant inroads into Japan – generally considered to be the most quality-conscious and demanding export market in the world. Important markets have also been developed in Germany, Spain, Israel, and South Korea, among others.
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