Grand Junction Agribusiness Leader Wanda Holt Expands Export Reach

Wanda Holt took over her family's fruit packing and distribution business in the Grand Junction area eight years ago, and has since led an expansion into international export markets that now account for a meaningful share of the company's revenue, a significant shift from its historically domestic-only customer base.

"We'd been selling to the same regional grocery distributors for decades," Holt said. "I could see that model had a ceiling, and I wanted to find growth somewhere else before we hit it." That search led Holt to pursue export certifications and international buyer relationships, a process she says took several years to fully establish.

Learning the Export Business From Scratch

Holt says navigating international food export regulations and certification requirements was an entirely new skill set for a company that had never shipped product outside domestic markets. She worked with state agricultural trade officials to understand certification requirements for key target markets, a process that involved significant paperwork and facility upgrades to meet international food safety standards.

The company invested in updated cold storage and packing facility improvements specifically to meet export certification requirements, a capital investment Holt says has also improved product quality and shelf life for the company's continuing domestic customers as a secondary benefit.

Diversifying Beyond a Single Customer Base

With export markets now representing a growing share of revenue, Holt says the company is less exposed to fluctuations in any single market than it was under the previous generation's purely domestic sales model. She's cautious about growing export sales too aggressively relative to domestic business, though, wanting to maintain the long-standing regional grocery relationships that remain the foundation of the company's business.

Holt says she's now exploring additional export markets beyond the company's initial international customers, though she's prioritizing building strong, reliable relationships with a smaller number of markets over rapidly expanding into many new countries at once.