Daily Fresh Distributing Inc., a Nogales, AZ, founded in fall 2011 by Paul Bachelier, who was previously in sales with Omega Produce Co., will embark on its first season of handling grapes from Mexico with the start of the Sonora grape deal in early May.

But while grapes are new to the company, they are not new to Mr. Bachelier, who has been involved in grape sales for 18 years.

“We are up in volume a little bit” in the Mexican grape deal this year, said Atomic Torosian, a partner in Crown Jewels Produce Co. in Fresno, CA, April 3. “We should be looking at around 800,000 to 850,000 cases of grapes this year” out of Mexico.”

The start date should be a week to 10 days earlier than last year, which was later than normal, he said.

Bruce KleinBruce Klein, director of marketing for Maurice A.

Year by year, worldwide demand for sweet potatoes has seen a steady and significant increase. Nash Produce, headquartered in Nashville, NC, one of the larger sweet potato distributors in the United States, takes pride in always having a year-round supply of product, regardless of that ever-increasing demand.  

The Molina Group in Hermosillo, Sonora, Mexico, which owns Fresh Farms in Nogales, AZ, and is one the larger grape growers in Mexico, grows a wide assortment of fresh table grape varieties.

According to the group’s web site, those varieties include Perlette, Flame, Sugraone, Red Globe, Black Seedless and Summer Royal.

Stevco Inc., headquartered in Los Angeles, expects to have an increased volume of grapes from its spring grape deal out of Mexico this year, according to Jared Lane, vice president of marketing.

That growth will come partly from increased acreage and partly from better yields. “The crop in general is up in volume,” Mr. Lane said in an April 4 interview with The Produce News from the company’s Bakersfield, CA, office. In addition, “we have a little bit more added acreage of Flames.”