IVAN MUNOZ took on the role of sales and food-safety manager at Cal Flavor, a sister company of Los Angeles-based Cal Pacific Growers, in August.

Gourmet Trading Co. in Los Angeles distributes blueberries from the 5th Region to the 10th Region of Chile into Canada, Asia and both coasts of the United States.

Luciano Fiszman, procurement manager for the company, said that its season begins in November with a perfect transition from Argentina.

“New this year, Duda Farm Fresh Foods is offering ‘Celery Celebrations,’ a line of seasonal packaging that is designed to help spur impulse buys during critical holiday sales periods,” said Nichole Towell, marketing director for the Oviedo, FL-based company.

“The line features packs of 30-count sleeved celery stalks, 18-count celery hearts and eight-ounce zip-top celery stick packages,” she said.

Ms. Towell noted that the packaging is festive and features snowflakes to reiterate the holiday timeframe of the product’s availability, which began on Nov. 1.

IPR Fresh, which was founded in 2003, started out as a produce brokerage business, but “we have been growing on the shipper side as we distribute produce directly now” from growers in Mexico, said Jose Luis Obregon, president of the company, in an interview with The Produce News, one year to the day from the day he joined his brothers and father in the family business.

“We are just about to get started in the next week with our season,” said John Hurley Neer at Rene Produce LLC in Nogales, AZ, Nov. 14. Mr. Neer, who is in charge of business development at Rene, is based in North Carolina but covers the country for the company.

“We have increased acreage on all items” for the 2012-13 season and have added, for the first time, organic Roma tomatoes, he said.

“We are seeing tremendous growth” out of Nogales, said Luis Corella, who works in sales in the Nogales office of Fresno, CA-based Crown Jewels Produce Co., in an interview with The Produce News Nov. 16. “Basically, we are seeing an increase of anywhere between 30 and 40 percent” over last year “depending on the commodity

“We are working with new growers” in different growing regions of West Mexico, “and we are strategically located with them to where we are basically diversifying our risk” by having “two different growers per commodity in two different areas,” he said.