Still cultivating his passion
The gig: Founder and chief executive of Prime Produce International, a fast-growing avocado distributor. The company had sales of $27.5 million last year, up more than 50% from the prior year. That equates to about 52 million avocados.
Early career: Now 55, Crane grew up in the San Fernando Valley. In 1971, after graduating from Ulysses S. Grant High School in Van Nuys, he left for Israel, settling at the Shomrat kibbutz, a farm collective in the Western Galilee. He was mostly a grunt. But when the Yom Kippur War broke out in 1973, the young Crane suddenly found himself in charge of the avocado harvest. Everyone else had gone off to fight.
“It was a real challenge to get the avocados in. The army even requisitioned our truck to move supplies, so all we had was a small tractor,” Crane said.
Crane later did a stint in the Israeli army, serving as a combat engineer -- probably, he said, because he was good at driving tractors. But he turned out to have a green thumb.
“I learned to love to eat avocados in California but I learned to grow them in Israel,” Crane said.
He stayed at Shomrat until 1985, meeting and marrying his wife, Shiffy, there. The couple were still on the collective when they had their sons, Gahl and Yair, who now work with their father at Prime Produce.
Crane returned to the United States to take a position with the California Avocado Commission.
The building: Prime Produce is headquartered just blocks from the plaza in Orange in a historic two-acre fruit packing warehouse owned by Chapman University.
The structure was built about 90 years ago by the Santiago Orange Growers Assn. It was later used by the Villa Park Orchards Assn. and the Sunkist citrus cooperative.
Crane’s office is in one of the nine former storage coolers that are built into the complex. Architects designed the main packing section of the building so that windows face north. This allows light into the building but keeps the hot afternoon sun from reaching the fruit. The site has one of the oldest working elevators in Southern California.
Other jobs: Crane launched the Chiquita Brands Avocado Division and headed the international sales operation of Calavo Growers.
The company: Crane founded Prime Produce in 2004 and purchased H&H; Avocado Co. in 2005. Prime Produce opened a logistics office in Mexico in 2007. The company sources its avocados from growers in California, Mexico and Chile. Wal-Mart is among its retail clients.
Crane said Orange is a great place to run an avocado company. California produces about 90% of the nation’s avocados and gobbles nearly one-third of all the avocados eaten annually in the U.S. Crane believes the industry, helped by imports from a growing number of nations, could increase 10% a year for the next 10 years.
Biggest challenge: The company needs capital. It has to pay farmers for their fruit faster than it gets paid by wholesalers and retail clients. With the average truckload of avocados going for about $50,000, the gap in the payment schedules puts companies such as Prime Produce in a constant cash squeeze. The current credit environment, in which financing is scarce, makes that even tougher.
Vision: Crane would like to branch into other imported produce that would allow his company to leverage its distribution system and client base.
Education: Certificate in farm management, Ruppin Agricultural College, Israel. Bachelor’s degree in information systems management, University of San Francisco.
Stress reliever: “For the last 21 months, my new hobby has been playing with and watching my granddaughter Maya grow,” Crane said.
Reading now: “Keep the Family Baggage Out of the Family Business: Avoiding the Seven Deadly Sins That Destroy Family Businesses” by Quentin J. Fleming.
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