Tours

The Philadelphia Wholesale Produce Market opened June 5, 2011 as the world's largest fully-enclosed, fully-refrigerated wholesale produce terminal. The facility's main building is one-quarter of a mile long and 686,000 square feet — bigger than 14 football fields!  Its most distinguishing operational benefit is cold-chain protection for their fresh fruits and vegetables. This assures freshness, food safety, quality and maximizes shelf life. From a visual point of view, Philadelphia Wholesale Produce Market's (PWPM) most remarkable feature is the central concourse, which runs the length of the building. An enormous skylight warms this brilliantly colorful, clean and safe shopping area! For a nominal fee, anyone is welcome to enter and purchase produce by the carton from the market's 24 independent produce distributors.

Located in Glassboro, New Jersey, Eastern Propak was founded about 18 years ago and is jointly owned by its New Jersey-based grower-suppliers Summit City Farms in Glassboro, Heilig Orchards in Richwood, F&R Grasso Farms in Mullica Hill and Gala Orchards in Elmer. The growers produce white and yellow peaches and nectarines. Eastern Propak packs the peaches, and Sunny Valley International, also headquartered in Glassboro, does the marketing. Besides growers' labels, the company uses the "Jersey Fresh" label, the state's locally grown initiative to which it is strongly committed.

The Rutgers EcoComplex is the nation's first research, technology development, teaching and outreach center that is dedicated to enhancing the environment and agriculture through education, outreach and "green" business development. In addition to its original charter, the EcoComplex is expanding its mission by including alternative energy innovation into its activities. Now, the EcoComplex is a multi-institutional, multidisciplinary environmental and alternative energy innovation center that harnesses research and education resources towards the development, and industrial application, of innovative environmental and alternative energy technologies. Their mission is to promote economic development in the environmental and alternative energy innovation arenas, including testing and verifying new alternative energy innovations, the remediation and protection of environmental quality, and the compatible sectors of food and innovative agriculture.

Kube Pak is owned by the Swanekamp family. They are a wholesale greenhouse, located in Allentown, New Jersey. The name Kube-Pak refers to the unique way that they package their bedding plants. Basically what they do is compress and form soil mix into a "kube". Six of these "kubes" are put into a plastic "pak". Eight of these "paks" are put into a flat. It is actually an old idea that came from Europe, where farmers would make dirt cubes with soil from their fields. They have updated the idea and now use specialized soil mixes and a large hydraulic press to form their kubes. They have 803,000 square feet (18 acres) of gutter-connected double-poly greenhouses. They also have 6 acres of outside growing area.