The fresh produce industry is an exciting space full of innovative businesses – big and small – that are making a difference in our industry.

To celebrate that innovation, Volm Companies is highlighting businesses that demonstrate industry leadership by embracing automation. This season, we're profiling Mack Farms, which produces high quality fresh potatoes and watermelons in central Florida.

In this recent interview with Volm, here’s what Chandler Mack had to say about market trends, the best thing about his business and what’s new and exciting at his facility.
 

Q: What’s the history of Mack Farms?

A: My father Arnold started the company in the late 60s out of South Alabama. Back in the day, there was a fair amount of red potato production out of that area. It would only be a three to five-week crop and they'd be done because you have a short planting window, then a short harvest window. He had some other commodities he was working with, primarily watermelons. He was in his mid-20s, more of a hustler. I can remember going to a potato shed in Alabama. I was probably five, six years old and it was very different than what we have – it was just an old barn. He really liked the produce business and long story short, he got involved more with watermelons and founded a niche. He built that up over the course of 10 years through the 70s. He was probably the first real sizable production on the East Coast of seedless watermelons. So that gave him the capital to come down here and farm new potatoes because South Florida has a pretty good-sized window for it. He bought acreage and started with a little potato line he bought at a homestead. It was old and rickety – the line was probably 40, 50 years old. So that's where we got our humble beginnings.
 

Q: And what about your operations now? What do you currently grow and pack?

A: We're still potatoes and watermelons. We had another farm [in Georgia] that we bought back in 2000. And they actually grew potatoes down there as well. But it was also a cabbage farm, sweet corn, broccoli – other items like that. But 2015 and 2016 ended up being two challenging weather years in Florida to grow. It just didn't work out with the timing and my dad passed away in 2016. So, we got back into what we could focus on here. Which was probably the best move. We dabbled in other things, but we found that potatoes and watermelons were our niche.
 

Q: What’s the best thing about your business?

A: By far, it's our team. I’ve got guys that have been with me for 35 years. You don't find that too often. A lot of places have high turnover, so it's like a family. And the people that come to work here, they love the environment. It's just so much more laid-back. Also, in 2007-08, we started to get into year-round distribution. That year-round distribution is what gives us the capability to invest in automation. When we look at investing in automation, it doesn't take long for us to justify it.
 

Q: Speaking of automation, what Volm equipment do you think has made the most impact in your facility?

A: It's not even one thing – it's a combination of everything together. But I would say, when we put in our automated consumer pack line with the palletizers and the weigher and everything, and when we saw how that was – the labor savings and the production output – that helped us justify the investment. Once we did that and ran that a couple seasons, we were like, okay, we knew we wanted to do it. It's just hard to do everything at once because you never know what kind of farming year you're going to have.

Q: You also had a couple of Flikweert Quality Graders installed. How have they been for your operations?

A: I was in Europe for Fruit Logistica and I got to see a couple of those operate. I spoke to [Flikweert Vision CEO] Martijn Flikweert a little bit at the show. I didn't want to invest in something that I didn't know. I mean, is this person going to be around in five, ten years from now? I talked to Volm about it and they said he's passionate about it, he's always been into the programming, and he loves automation and AI. So, it's good. I'm hoping I can get another one in the next year.
 

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Q: Let's talk about the future a little bit. If you could make one prediction for the industry, what would it be?

A: Across all categories, it seems like smaller-pack, more value-add type items are getting a lot of consumer interest. A lot of the younger generations, they're willing to pay for more convenience, it seems. For us, the five pound is still the main item, but there's a little bit of a decline in that towards these other smaller packs, which is kind of why we got involved with the creamers and bought the [Volmpack] MD20 D to be able to do the pillow pack and steamable stuff that we do. To be quite honest, the volume is still with the five pounders, but to have direct retail business, you’ve got to have the full offering.
 

Q: Do you have any predictions with respect to automation or machinery or anything you'd like to see?

A: With grading equipment, the technology is advancing so quickly. We find that a lot of the grading equipment we have right now does a lot better job than a human grader can do. It doesn't get tired, doesn't call in sick – it's consistent. With humans, sometimes you can get over-grading. A machine can really evaluate that potato and make a real-time decision quicker. A human's got a split second to look at that potato and know. Optical sorting, it's able to do a better job in that regard. So another advantage of having them is you're hopefully not throwing away as much as somebody over-grading.


Q: What's next for Mack Farms and is there anything else you want to share about the future?

A: Florida's population is growing, but in our customer base, we already do business with pretty much everybody you do business with. So now we’ve got to figure out how to extract the most from what we're doing. How do we do that? We went after the low hanging fruit with the machines. So now it's more of a product handling type scenario. Can we handle the product better basically? Modifying coolers and our storage where it's going to be better for the product and that kind of thing. That's next on our radar.

This interview has been condensed and edited.
 

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