GLENNVILLE, GA - Innovation is the key to advancement, and it takes trailblazers in any industry to guide their peers toward the cutting edge. This can be said about Bland Farms and its leadership team, including Delbert Bland, Owner and President, who continues to push the onion supplier to the next level.
“You hardly ever see a farming operation, or a family farm, start out doing the selling and the growing,” Delbert says, explaining that the company was making unique moves from its inception.
With a passion for the sales side of the Bland Farms operation, Delbert wielded this interest to evolve the operation. Through a series of advancements over the years, the company has earned a well-respected name in the onion category.
“We’ve been the largest Vidalia® onion grower/shipper/packer for 25 years or more,” explains Troy Bland, Chief Executive Officer. “It takes a consistent amount of innovation for you to stay on top.”
And innovate is exactly what Bland Farms continues to do. Combining the force of its growing and sales teams, the company has been able to streamline its structure, bringing on a dedicated lineup of associates to handle marketing, quality control, and food safety in order to create a strong foundation for unbridled growth.
This fortified base is what has enabled Bland Farms to seek out and implement innovation across its operations. With a new packing facility opening just this year, Luke McBee, Director of Operations, describes how the grower was able to drastically increase its flow of product while maintaining quality and consistency.
“Our old bagging lines used static weighers and each bagger was equipped with 14 drops per second…the way that we’re sizing now, we’ve got a four-lane cup sizer and we’re running hundreds of onions per second,” he describes. “We’re weighing those dynamically, and we’re able to have a lot more selections that go into each bag, which is decreasing our overall overpack.”
In addition to its new bagging machines is a series of e-bag machines that aims to meet the rising demand for sustainable packaging. For Bland’s customers looking to offer shoppers environmentally friendly options, the machines use a material that has less plastic and is 100 percent recyclable, further establishing the onion supplier as pushing forward industry advancement.
But that’s not all folks. Bland Farms has also moved its packing area into a controlled-atmosphere facility. Through state-of-the-art equipment, the company is able to control the temperature and humidity that its onions are exposed to everyday, giving its customers a longer shelf-life and better quality.
To see what else the Bland Farms’ leadership team had to say about its ongoing growth, make sure to click on the video above.
With one eye always focused on progress, Bland Farms continues to be a torchbearer in the industry, leaving this trade news writer to wonder what will come next for the supplier?
Stick with AndNowUKnow to see what tricks the company has up its sleeve.
