Gresham's economy ran on berry, grape, and vegetable farming from the 1910s through the 1960s, leaving behind fruit-handling know-how that still shapes the city's packaging automation needs. A frozen and fresh fruit processor founded in 1931 operates an individually-quick-frozen (IQF) plant in Gresham, packing organic and conventional blueberries, cane berries, cranberries, and other bulk fruit for retail, foodservice, and industrial buyers around the world. The city calls itself the economic center of eastern Multnomah County, with industrial-zoned land that supports food-adjacent manufacturing and distribution next to that decades-old agricultural base. Regional economic-development groups list food and beverage manufacturing as a priority industry for the greater Portland area, citing beverage bottling, snack production, and seafood processing among the cluster's anchors.
An IQF berry operation running at that scale needs packaging equipment built for moisture-heavy, irregularly shaped product rather than uniform granules. Berries bruise easily. Our Mars Series vertical form-fill-seal (VFFS) machines form, fill, and seal bags of frozen fruit at production speed, while our EliteWeigh multihead weighers deliver accurate portion counts for berries and other bulk pieces without crushing them on the way into the bag. Both machine types are designed for the high-volume, delicate-product packaging that frozen fruit and produce processors run through Gresham's plants every season. If your line has to keep pace with berry harvest windows, you need equipment on hand, not on order. We keep VFFS and multihead-weigher lines in stock for Gresham's IQF season, and our solutions team builds each line around the fruit it has to handle.