Fruit Growers Supply Co. Building in Santa Paula

Fruit Growers Supply Co., the supply division of Sherman Oaks-based Sunkist Growers Inc., is scheduled to break ground Friday on an 11-acre site in Santa Paula that will house a supply facility for Ventura County growers.

Officials of the supply company, which has been located on a two-acre parcel in Santa Paula since 1985, hope to have the project completed by the end of the year.

The new facility on Telegraph Road will include 14,600 square feet of office and retail showroom space and 34,000 square feet of warehouse storage room.

“We’ve outgrown the home we’ve spent the last 10 years in,” said Tony Stolz, director of Sunkist’s operation centers, including the one in Santa Paula. “We need to increase our space to be able to service our own member growers and nonmember growers.”

Fruit Growers Supply Co. was organized in 1907 by members of the California Fruit Growers Exchange, which was subsequently renamed Sunkist Growers Inc., to ensure that there would be sufficient supplies needed by member growers in harvesting, packaging and shipping their citrus.

A Fruit Growers Supply facility has been in Ventura County since 1979, when it was located in Saticoy. Over the past 10 years, the supply company has expanded to serve nonmember growers, who produce a variety of crops.

“We’re hoping to expand the grower supplies we have,” said Kathy Emond, administrator of the Santa Paula center. “We’re now branching into row crops and flowers, and there’s going to be a little influx of grape growers in the county.”