Company History - Dole Fresh Vegetables
When you arrive at Dole Fresh Vegetables, you arrive at a company steeped in a rich agricultural heritage. In fact, our history goes back to the 1940's!
In1943, Lester V. "Bud" Antle founded a produce packing and shipping company in the Pajaro Valley in Central California, naming it BUD Antle. You still see the BUD logo on many of our commodity vegetable product cartons.
In the1950's BUD introduced vacuum cooling, a process that allows lettuce to cool in just 30 minutes and enhances the freshness and quality of the produce.
The1970's: Bud Antle also entered the pre-cut Salad industry for Food Service (restaurant and institutional use), providing shredded lettuce in 5 and 10 pound bags. Bud also introduced shredded cabbage for the retail markets, and making cole slaw was never the same!
1990 An automatic salad packager was developed, which bagged and sealed chopped lettuce in three, five and ten pound bags.
1991 heralded the opening the largest refrigerated produce warehouse of its kind in the world at Marina, California. This “Cooler,” featured the latest new technology, called the Automated Storage and Retrieval System (ASRS),
1993 marked the 50thanniversary of business operations, and groundbreaking for the new Soledad, California salad processing facility.
The bagged salad concept revolutionized the produce category, and by1997, DFV was opening a third value-added salad processing facility, this one in Springfield, Ohio!.
In2004, DFV acquired Coastal Berry Company, renaming it Dole Berry Company. The next year,2005, Dole Berry Company introduced a new strawberry variety called Albion, unique in that it grows best when the day length is long and it is quite disease resistant.
In2007, Bessemer City Plant began operations for bagged salads
In2008, Ray De Riggi joined us as President of our Division. The Operations Excellence program was originated in 2008.
In2010, we introduced a solar-powered strawberry harvest machine which significantly improved our harvest productivity. And by being solar powered, our carbon footprint, fuel and maintenance costs have been minimized! All value added plants received SQF (Safe Quality Food) 2000 level 2 certification.
SunnyRidge Farms was the big news, as in 2011 we acquired this major grower, shipper and marketer of blueberries, blackberries and raspberries with operations in Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, Mexico and Chile.