RIO RICO, AZ — When a produce distributor has a broad product line that undergoes a total rebranding campaign involving many growers and packinghouses, the results can only evolve over time.

SunFed Produce, LLC, based here, announced such an effort in October at the PMA Fresh Summit in Anaheim.

On a Feb. 3 check-in with Brett Burdsal, who is the director of marketing for SunFed, he indicated that new three-count pepper bags are “shipping now to selected markets.” The three count peppers are either “stoplight” or “rainbow” mixes.

NOGALES, AZ — “We are looking at a mango program that will start in April, and run in May, June and July,” said Sergio Chamberlain, president of SCC Fresh, LLC, located here.

The mangos will be sourced in the state of Nayarit, which is south of Sinaloa. Chamberlain is expecting to handle between 500,000 and 600,000 boxes of mangos. Chamberlain, who launched SCC in 2009, has sold Mexican mangos in the past, but this is a first venture into the category for SCC.

RIO RICO, AZ — Mexican grapes and watermelons will be the highlighted import items marketed by The Sykes Co., this spring. Company owner Bill Sykes said he will be primarily handling Flame and Sugraone grapes.

The grape deal will begin in the first part of May.

In late March or early April, Sykes, which is located here, will begin shipping Mexican seedless watermelons out of Hermosillo. “We are expecting a normal crop” of watermelons, said Bill Sykes, who started the firm in 1978.

RIO RICO, AZ — The Mexican spring shipping season will bring a variety of products for Paul Bachelier, who handles marketing sales and service at Daily Fresh Distributing, Inc., based here.

The firm will be shipping the “Makio” cucumber until mid-May. That deal began the second week of December.

Bachelier is also “working on a couple of grape deals in the late spring and early summer,” he said.

Daily Fresh will be distributing squash through April or into early May.

Eggplant and Roma tomatoes are also in Daily Fresh’s offerings.

There was a time that strawberry fields dotted Orange County, the geographic region that gave Orange County Produce LLC in Irvine, CA, its name.

Urbanization, however, has taken over and Orange County Produce now sees much of its strawberry production come from Ventura County, about 90 miles north of the firm’s headquarters.

“We are now up to about 600 acres in the Oxnard area [in Ventura County],” said Matt Kawamura, director of sales and co-owner of the firm.

Eclipse Berry Farms LLC, which has its sales office in Los Angeles and its production in three coastal California districts to the north, has expanded its acreage this year significantly, though the industry is in more of a holding pattern.