Members of the LoBue family recently began the process of selling LoBue Citrus in Lindsay. From left to right are Joe LoBue, export sales manger; Philip LoBue, president; Fred LoBue, chairman of the board; and Robert LoBue, general manager of LoBue Farms. Photo contributed by LoBue Citrus

In recent years, the LoBue Citrus packing house in Lindsay hadn’t been as busy as it was when business was at its peak in the early to mid 2000s, with workers shipping out about four million cartons of citrus a year.

These days, the number is down to about 2-2.5 million 40-pound cartons.

“The industry kind of grew. There are more players” harvesting, packing and shipping citrus, said Philip LoBue, the Lindsay-based business’ president and managing partner.

“Our niche was small independent growers — small farmers,” but many have migrated to bigger, corporate packing houses including those run by the Wonderful Co. and Sunkist Growers, Inc., he said.

While LoBue Citrus could have survived the competition, LoBue said he and other family members recently decided to sell the business, which was started after his grandfather bought a 40-acre orange grove east of Lindsay for his three sons in 1934.

As for why, LoBue said, “The seniors are all about 70 years of age, and not enough family members are interested in running the business” after those now running it retire, he explained.

“It takes a lot of energy, a lot of thought to keep it moving forward,” LoBue said. “That’s why we decided it’s best that we transition out.”

But family members didn’t want to sell to just anybody, as they considered the farming, harvesting and packing business to still be very viable, nor did they want to hurt the farmers they serve.

“We narrowed our search to people who understand citrus and know how to pack it, because a lot of our growers are going to go on with the new company,” said LoBue, who along with the rest of the board of directors decided to sell to M Park, Inc., a grower and packinghouse operation out of Orange Cove.

Daniel Kim, the company’s chief operating and financial officer, as well as co-owner with his father, Alex, started their citrus operation about 10 years ago with the purchase of a 20-acre grove and have expanded to owning 670 acres.

They harvest and pack annually about 700,000 cartons of their citrus and that of other farmers in the region, Kim said.

“Our marketing capabilities has always exceeded our production capabilities, and the purchase of the Lindsay operation will change that,” he said, noting that once the purchase is finalized, probably some time in September, M Park will go from being the 13th top citrus packer in California to the fifth.

He said he and his father tried to buy the Suntreat Packing & Shipping Co. in Lindsay when it was for sale a couple of years ago, but they bowed out when the price got too steep.

Neither Kim or LoBue disclosed the purchase price for the LoBue operation.

Currently, the industry is in between citrus harvest periods, but when workers come back to what will be the former LoBue operation in October, there will be some changes, Kim said.

He said his staff has started interviewing executives and leaders at LoBue, and soon he plans to interview other current staff interested in applying for jobs after the business changes hands.

LoBue said he normally has 100-120 full- and part-time employees during his peak season, and “There was a lot of angst among employees if they would get hired back. I think they are all going to be hired back by the [new] company.”

But Kim said each applicant will be judged on his or her own merits, and being a current or seasonal LoBue employee will provide no special consideration for being hired.

“We’re starting fresh. No seniority,” he said.

“There will be some new faces, there will be some old faces.”

For his part, Kim said he works differently from a lot of other citrus growers and packers in the Valley, as he puts more focus on selling fruit to foreign buyers rather than on the domestic market.

He said his father owns a cold storage and fruit repackaging business in his native South Korea, and focuses on running that while his son runs things here.

That gives the family strong inroads for fruit sales into the Asian market, Kim said.

Both his Orange Cove packing house and the one he’s acquiring in Lindsay primarily pack navel oranges, which have had rough times in recent years competing in U.S. grocery stores against highly popular easy-peal Mandarins, some marketed under the “Cuties” and “Halos” brand names.

And the situation has been made worse by California’s recent severe drought and increasing operating costs for farmers, Kim said.

“So the only thing we can do is try to find markets that pay more” for navels, which don’t have much competition from easy peals in overseas markets because they’re in such high demand here that not many are being shipped overseas, he explained.

Some time between the finalization of the LoBue sale and the next harvest, Kim said he plans to upgrade some equipment at the Lindsay packing house, but more extensive upgrades likely are coming in a few years.

“I plan to automate more in the future,” said Kim, adding that he is studying automation in South Korean packing houses, as “The citrus industry is very advanced technologically in Korea.

“It’s a business model I’m studying.”