“With the exception of our heirloom tomatoes, Southern Specialties grows, imports and processes a wide range of products from Central and South America, Canada and Mexico,” Charlie Eagle, vice president of business development for the Pompano Beach, FL-based company told The Produce News. “Our line is compiled of ‘Southern Selects’ French beans, green and white asparagus, hand-peeled Brussels sprouts, hand-peeled baby carrots with tops, hand-peeled rainbow baby carrots with tops, sugar snap peas, snow peas, yellow beans, baby squash, limes and more.”

“Our new ‘Sunset’ brand was unveiled last fall at the PMA [Produce Marketing Association] Fresh Summit expo,” said Chris Veillon, marketing director for Mastronardi Produce, headquartered in Kingsville, ON. “We will now bring this same fresh new look — along with some other new concepts that we have been working on — to the Southeast Produce Council’s 2013 Southern Exposure in Orlando, FL, on Feb. 28–March 2.”

Village Farms International, headquartered in Eatontown, NJ, will be represented at Southern Exposure Retail & Foodservice Conference & Expo in Orlando, FL, this year by Douglas Kling, senior vice president and chief sales and marketing officer; Bret Wiley, vice president of sales operations; Steve Poklemba, regional sales manager and Alan Kleinman, eastern district sales manager.

Prime Time Sales LLC in Coachella, CA, exclusive sales agent for Prime Time International, which specializes in bell peppers year-round with production in Mexico and California, has in recent years added mini peppers to its offerings.

“This is our third season of growing them in Culiacan [Sinaloa, Mexico],” said Mike Aiton, marketing manager.

Movement for Mexican-grown tomatoes this winter has been “very good across all parts of the country, and prices have been … above the minimum until this past week” when volume increased, said Joe Bernardi, president of Bernardi & Associates Inc. in Nogales, AZ, Feb. 8. “Now we have come into our typical heavy February volume, and prices are at or near the minimum on pretty much all the tomato items. We continue to have good distribution around the country. That is where we are currently.”

“The biggest change we have from the past” for the spring deal this year is that “our Roma tomato deal will be a lot larger than it was last season, said Jorge Quintero Jr., managing partner of Grower Alliance LLC in Nogales, AZ. “We are expecting a Roma tomato deal … of about 500,000 boxes, which is a significant increase” from the 150,000 boxes of Romas the company shipped in the spring of 2012.

The deal will start in March and run to the middle of June, he said.