Sun Belle Inc. has a lot to celebrate this year.
The Schiller Park, Ill.-based company is celebrating its 35th year as a shipper/distributor of high-quality produce with a special emphasis on berries.
The company handles a full berry line, including strawberries, blueberries, blackberries, raspberries as well as golden berries, cranberries, red currants and even pomegranate arils, said president and founder Janice Honigberg.
The company also offers organic berries.
Besides marking a milestone anniversary this year, the firm is introducing two new berry varieties – Malu raspberries and Amelali blackberries.
The Malu is “a beautiful, large red berry that is firm and has very, very nice flavor,” she said.
It started in September and will be grown until early July.
The company also will have a large Baja California raspberry program that started in early December and will expand through the middle of March and pick up again in June through early September.
That program will include the Malu variety as well as several other kinds of raspberries.
“It gives us year-round coverage on raspberries, and we also are working year-round on blackberries as well with blueberries,” Honigberg said.
Sun Belle continues to expand its blackberry program with the Amelali variety.
It was available in good quantities in November and will peak in February.
“That is going to be very exciting because generally there are fewer blackberries in the market at that timeframe, and we’ll have a lot of product,” she said.
Sun Belle offers strawberries year-round, importing them from central Mexico and Baja California from late November into May.
“We’re basically more than doubling our program on strawberries,” she said.
Honigberg started the company in a spare room in a small house in Washington, D.C., in January 1986.
“When I entered the industry, it was just when counter-seasonal produce was beginning to take off, and I felt that I had a role to play representing growers and bringing the best product to market,” she said.
“We now have five distribution centers,” she said, with facilities in Jessup, Md.; Miami; Oxnard, Calif.; Laredo, Texas; and in Schiller Park, near Chicago.
The Laredo facility was just purchased in 2020 and “is going extremely well,” she said.
“It gives us the ability to really service the Southwest market nicely.”
It also serves as a receiving and distribution point for berries imported from Mexico.
Sun Belle operates four packing lines for blueberries, including three heat-seal lines.
The heat seal process saves plastic and gives the package “a beautiful look,” she said.
Sun Belle expects to have good volume on nearly all the berry varieties this year, Honigberg said.
