Jason A. Smith | The Valdosta Daily TimesRaschieda Holiday performs a visual inspection at the picking table at South Georgia Pecan Company.

VALDOSTA, Ga. —The South Georgia Pecan Company has been around for more than 100 years, but in the last 10 or so years, the company has been making changes to its marketing strategy. 

Rather than focusing on selling directly to consumers of pecans and companies that use pecans for ingredients, the company has begun focusing on selling pecan products in retail, Vice President Jeff Worn said. This means South Georgia Pecan Company products will be available at groceries and other places, including amazon.com. 

Worn said the company has placed its pecan butter for sale on amazon, and in some of the larger cities, same-day delivery is available for product from the Valdosta manufacturer. 

After the shift in focus on retail, South Georgia Pecan Company started doing what Worn called “value added.” He said that means: “Anything we do to add a service or a quality that was not there before.”

With the new focus on retail and value-added, the company has added several new product lines and has ideas for new products including a nut-and-cluster product that will be available in January, pecan milk, pecan flour and pecan oil, he said.

The new products are made in-house and are part of the value-added from the company, Worn said. The new products are produced in-house “to go more direct to the consumer to be able to keep products at a reasonable price.”

The shift in focus means the production of more pecans will be needed to keep up with demand and South Georgia Pecan Company is building an 80,000-square-foot building in El Paso, Texas, Worn said. He expects the new facility to increase output by 50-75 percent. 

Worn also shared how pecans are processed upon arriving at South Georgia Pecan Company. 

Pecans are received in the shell from various farms, he said. South Georgia Pecan Company does not own any farms, but has long-standing partnerships with pecan farmers. 

Once the pecans are received, the pecans are sized, cleaned and frozen to ensure freshness when they are ordered. 

After the pecans are needed, they are tempered, or thawed out and go through a cleaning process. 

The pecans go though a hot-water sanitation process and the outside of the shells are pasteurized to remove any pathogens that could have come from the farm. 

With the outside of the pecans clean, the shells are cracked and taken back to a moisture level of approximately 4 percent. Then any foreign materials or defects are removed for the “consumers, retailer and ingredient users to enjoy,” Worn said. 

South Georgia Pecan Company was founded in 1913 and has been owned by the Pearlman family, Beatrice Foods (1970) and most recently by Jim Worn and Ed Crane (1983). After Ed Crane passed about a year ago, the company is owned by Jim Worn.

South Georgia Pecan Company sells pecan halves, large pieces of pecans, small pieces of pecans, chocolate amaretto pecans, roasted salted pecans, cinnamon spiced pecans, cashews, pecan brittle, walnuts, in-shell pecans, pecan butter and pistachios in various sizes. 

More information on South Georgia Pecan Product, visit georgiapecan.com or visit its gift shop at 401 E. Hill Ave. 

Jason Smith is a reporter at The Valdosta Daily Times. He can be contacted at 229-244-3400 ext.1256.