Apr 30, 2019

Coastline Family Farms, Madison Ranches grow onions together

Coastline Family Farms, a western vegetable grower/shipper with locations in Salinas, California; Yuma, Arizona and Brawley, California, has formed a new dry onion growing and packing joint venture with Madison Ranches located in Echo, Oregon. The new venture will be named Madison-Cox Onions, LLC.

Larry Cox, the CEO and grower/owner of Coastline said “My family has been growing red, yellow and white dry onions in the Imperial Valley of California for over 35 years. With the dynamics of the produce marketplace, we wanted to consolidate our onion sales under the Coastline Family Farms structure and develop an all-year-round onion program on the West Coast. We have known the Madison family for some time, they have a reputation for producing high quality premium onions in the Hermiston region of Oregon and knew they would be the right partner to help expand our production footprint.”

“Larry, myself, and our teams began discussing working together in the Pacific Northwest last fall. We are very excited about the opportunity to put together a quality oriented, year round onion program.” said Jake Madison, a fourth-generation grower and CEO of Madison Ranches. “Our two family farming companies are very similar which helps build a strong foundation of trust, shared values and a focus on a customer centric business model”.

The Madison-Cox Onions joint venture will produce red and yellow bulb onions in Hermiston Oregon with the first harvest in September 2019 and shipping through March of 2020. Madison Ranches will be responsible for the production, storage, packing and shipping for the new venture.

“We started construction this week on our new packing and storage facility which will feature a state-of-the-art, optical grading, sorting and packing line, capable of meeting the needs of our clients with onion bags ranging from 10-50 pounds. We focused the design on automation and state of the art equipment in order to deliver a premium product to our customers. ” said Jonathan Miller, general manager of the Madison-Cox Onions joint venture..

“Coastline Family Farms will handle the sales and marketing for the joint venture.” said Tonya Giotta, vice president for foodservice sales. The onion and vegetable sales veteran is joined by Carly Kwak-Bauch, vice president of product and channel development. Both women previously worked together at River Point Farms and were tapped by Coastline to develop a new dry onion business unit.

“The addition of the Madison-Cox joint venture in Oregon, gives Coastline a year-round, integrated West Coast supply base. This enables us to provide national and regional foodservice operators, distributors, wholesalers and retail clients with a consistent year-round supply of premium dry onions.” Giotta said.

Coastline Family Farms was founded in 1991 and is owned by Larry and Tina Cox. The company is a year-round grower-shipper of premium vegetables from California, Arizona and Mexico. Four generations of the Cox family have actively farmed throughout California for over 95 years. Today, the company grows permanent, rotational and vegetable crops on over 10,000 acres of farmland in conjunction with a handful of highly respected, quality-focused family growers.  This integrated grower/packer/shipper alignment, provides a product line which includes lettuces (iceberg, red and green leaf and romaine) and a wide range of vegetables including cauliflower, broccoli, spinach, green onions, dry onions (red, yellow and white) and more.

Since 1917, the Madison family has farmed the rich soils of the Southern Columbia Basin in Oregon. Today the fourth generation, Jake and Heather Madison manage nearly 10,000 irrigated acres producing onions, vegetables, seed crops, grains, organic crops, cattle, and feed crops. Continuing the over 100- year tradition of sustainable agricultural farming, the Madison’s use pioneering water conservation practices including  cutting edge irrigation  management systems, aquifer recharge along with aquifer storage and recovery (sub surface water basin replenishment and storage) and green power generation (wind, solar and hydro).

Photo at top: Travis, Larry and Thomas Cox.