Our History

 

The Gillette Family began farming citrus in Southern California in the late 1800’s.  In the early 1960’s, with the housing boom on the horizon, the family began farming citrus in the San Joaquin Valley, eventually relocating their operations to the region in the late 1970’s.  In 1983, the idea to vertically integrate became a reality with the formation of Gillette Citrus, a packing facility that would enable greater control on all aspects of growing, packing and shipping.  Three years later Gillette Citrus joined Sunkist Growers Inc. as a licensed packer to help take their brands around the world.

In 2023, because of Sunkist issues with selling fruit as well as to an equity system amongst their many packinghouses and lower customer acceptance as a result, we saw the need to make a change where quality and customer service was recognized and rewared.  We sold our packing operations to Cobblestone Packing and our fruit will now be sold by Kings River Sales.

Kings River Sales is known in the domestic market as the premire grower packer shipper due to their consistent quality and customer service.  With the addition of Gillette Citrus and Cobblestone's new state of the art packing faciltity, the fruit grown by the Gillette Family and their previous growers will now be handles as it should in both the domestic and the export markets.  

 
“We are not a large corporate business, but just the opposite” said Mark Gillette.  “Gillette Citrus is made up of individuals who live on their ranches and take a hand in every aspect of their operation.  Our Grandfather Earl once said 'The best fertilizer is the grower’s footprints" and this has never been more true.