NOGALES, AZ — A new Nogales produce distributor, Healthy Trends, is in its first full year of shipping Mexican greenhouse and open field bell peppers.

Handling sales and marketing for the company is partner Bobby Astengo. Astengo previously worked nine years for Prime Time International, based in Coachella, CA.

Astengo was the sales and operations manager at Prime Time’s Nogales office. For seven years prior to that, he was the sales manager for Sysco FreshPoint, which has since closed its Nogales office.

The latest hurricane season has all but faded to a memory for Joe Bernardi, president of Bernardi & Associates in Nogales, AZ, who is anticipating a good spring deal.

“People are excited to be out and about,” he told The Produce News in early February. “It’s going to be an active spring.” Traditional wisdom, he pointed out, holds that producers who make it to February without any significant impacts to crops from weather will be in good shape.

RIO RICO, AZ — The calendar year in the Nogales deal had a rough start. But in February, Frank Calixtro, a salesman at Calixtro Distributing Co., Inc., said he looked forward to “hopefully more stable volume and good quality.”

Calixtro said his company “moves everything in Nogales.” This, of course, is a very wide range of Mexican produce.

RIO RICO, AZ — MAS Melons & Grapes, LLC, located here, is known as a major distributor of Mexican melons and grapes.

The company’s majority owner, Miguel (Miky) Suarez said a couple of new twists have been added to his offerings for this season.

“For the first time in our history, from Colima, we are shipping seedless watermelons,” Suarez said. “For the first time from anywhere, we have a very small deal in mini-watermelon.”

MAS Melons’ melon acreage is up 30 percent from a year ago.

RIO RICO, AZ — The busiest time of the year is fast approaching for the produce marketing company, GreenPoint Distributing, LLC.

GreenPoint is run by brothers Octavio and Ernesto Gutiérrez, who own the 20-year old agricultural enterprise, Agricola Gutiérrez, based in Obregón, Sonora.

The brothers own GreenPoint, and are also independent in other endeavors as well.

RIO RICO, AZ — Beyond the current spring vegetable deal, the Mexican spring watermelon deal for Fresh Farms will begin in the first week of April, according to Jerry Havel, director of sales and marketing.

For Fresh Farms, the large-volume watermelon deal will run until July.

Havel said on Jan. 20 that it is “too early to tell when grapes will start. Typically, though, it is between May 1 and May 5.”