Steve Tweten, chief executive officer for NoKota Packers, provided The Produce News with his comments and observations about the 2012 potato production season.

“We, at NoKota Packers, harvested the tonnage we expected to and filled our storage completely,” he stated. “The Red River Valley, as a whole, is right at the five-year average for storage volume.”

NoKota Packers is headquartered in Buxton, ND, and has more than three decades of experience storing, washing and packaging tablestock potatoes for resale. 

“We finally moved into our new facility,” said Marco Barreda, vice president of Veggies Inc. in Nogales, AZ, in an interview with The Produce News.

The new facility is 25,000 square feet in size, with a fully refrigerated warehouse and “a tremendous amount of office space compared to before.” The facility is about double the size of the company’s previous warehouse and offices, Mr. Barreda said. It is Primus-certified and includes “a special room where we have everything set up for our repack line.”

Ocean Spray Cranberries Inc. announced the promotion and appointment of Keith Benoit to vice president of global partners and developing markets. Mr. Benoit was formerly the director of international/Latin America markets and director of special markets. He will now be overseeing all business development in the Latin America and Asia Pacific regions, and will also manage Ocean Spray’s North America alliance with PepsiCo.
 

During the award presentations following the Famous Idaho Potato Bowl, Coach Gary Andersen said, "The Famous Idaho Potato Bowl belongs to the Aggies," as he accepted a trophy shaped as a crystal bowl loaded with Idaho potatoes.

After scoring 28 points in the fourth quarter, the Aggies won their second-ever bowl game by defeating the Toledo Rockets 41-15.

Membership in Certified Onions Inc., a not-for-profit corporation that provides testing for chemical residue as well as pathogens on onions in the Treasure Valley area of Idaho-Eastern Oregon, continues to grow as food-safety protocols are expanded by buyers.

According to Kay Riley, general manager of member company Snake River Produce and president of COI, said in late November that members now number more than two dozen, with two new companies coming in during 2012.

“The wonderful part about our program this year, for the 2012-13 season is we continue the same operation out of Culiacan, Sinaloa, Mexico” as in past seasons, said Javier (J.J.) Badillo, director of diversified products, who runs the Nogales, AZ, operation of Santa Paula, CA-based Calavo Growers Inc.

“We continue with our greenhouse and shade-cloth” operations as well as some open field production, but most of the production is now in protective structures, he said. There is “very light open-field production these days.”