Manufacturing
The 2015 Washington Manufacturing Awards: Food/Beverage Processor of the Year, Large Firms
By Bill Virgin April 28, 2015
This article originally appeared in the May 2015 issue of Seattle magazine.
WINNER
Tree Top
Selah
Whatever you can squeeze or slice from an apple, Tree Top is already doing it, producing not just familiar products like juice and applesauce but also a variety of food ingredients for other manufacturers.
The grower-owned cooperative reached $400 million in sales through new products and facilities, including a strawberry processing plant to make purees and ingredients for snacks, a new sorting plant to deliver the right fruit to the right processing line, new varieties of applesauce and new packaging, and new pouch lines for portable and squeezable fruits in individual servings.
To measure how the business is doing and to spur it on to greater productivity achievements Tree Top management developed a sustainability index (fruit solids produced divided by resources used). The goals: Cut water use and wastewater used by 25 percent by 2025 (in just one fiscal year, it reduced usage by 28 million gallons), energy use by 15 percent by 2020 and have no waste going to landfill by 2020.