Mark Dirrigl, vice president and partner of Shipping Point Marketing, Inc., passed away on Saturday, Aug. 16 after complications from surgery. He was at 54 years old.

Food Lion has unveiled a new, easier shopping experience for customers in 31 stores in the greater Wilmington, NC, market. The stores are the first in the Food Lion chain to receive remodels as part of the grocer's new "Easy, Fresh and Affordable...You Can Count on Food Lion Every Day" strategy, which was announced earlier this year.

With a total crop volume at only 60 percent of a year ago, the California avocado season is winding down as Mexico gears up to fill demand.

Ron Araiza, director of sales for Mission Produce Inc. in Oxnard, CA, told The Produce News Aug. 20 that California was expected to send around 6 million cartons of fruit to market this week and reduce its volume by around 1 million cartons per week for the next several weeks. That means California would send around 4 million cartons to market during the Labor Day week of Sept. 1.

The value of domestic mushroom production topped $1 billion for the fourth year in a row, according to a recently issued U.S. Department of Agriculture report. The 899 million-pound crop from 2013-14 broke last year's record value by $12 million.

The strong demand for mushrooms increased the value of the Agaricus crop to $1.05 billion from more than 882 million pounds sold. Pennsylvania accounted for 65 percent of the total volume of sales and second-ranked California contributed 12 percent.

Pacific Trellis Fruit, the Fresno, CA-based distributor of grapes and tree fruit, announced it will implement some changes at Dulcinea Farms, which it purchased earlier this year.

"We convened on a conference call with our members across the state on July 25," Julia Stewart, spokesperson for the New York Apple Association headquartered in Fishers, NY, told The Produce News. They forecasted then that crop would be 30 million bushels, just slightly above our average of 29.5 million but not as high as our 2013 crop which was estimated at 32 million."

Stewart added that this season's crop could get even larger as the apples tend to get bigger when the weather is as great as New York's has been throughout this growing season.