“As Florida’s fall produce season kicks into high gear, our new cold storage warehouse facility, CrowleyFresh, in Miami is busy handling an influx of locally grown seedless melons and other seasonal perishables,” said Eduardo Campos, the director of logistics for CrowleyFresh.

CrowleyFresh opened in Miami in early 2013. It is a joint offering by Crowley Maritime Corp., headquartered in Jacksonville, FL, and Customized Brokers, a customs brokerage company also located in Miami.

CrowleyFresh offers perishable shippers a new state-of-the-art, cold storage warehouse facility with multiple humidity and temperature-controlled coolers.

Blueberries at the Miami CrowleyFresh facility.“We opened our doors in February, providing 400,000-total-cubic feet of refrigerated space in Miami-Dade County,” added Campos. “The state-of-the-art facility features high-tech cooling and monitoring equipment, as well as additional storage for non-refrigerated materials and cargo. It is U.S. Department of Agriculture-approved, Primus-certified and HACCP-compliant. But that’s only the tip of the iceberg — as in lettuce.”

He said that food safety is of the utmost importance at the company.

“We’re adding the environmental, health and safety certification for CrowleyFresh,” said Campos. “This will add another level of security to our already stringent food-safety procedures.”

In addition to receiving products from the South America this time of year, the warehouse is also handling popular fall Florida produce like peaches, strawberries, citrus and vegetables.

“We’re doing inventory rotation, receiving and shipping to local supermarkets in South Florida,” Campos said. “We also will ship Florida-grown blueberries to Europe and Asia in the spring.”

Crowley Maritime Corp. also announced that Victory Gonzalez has been hired as the firm’s new bilingual communications specialist, which is an imperative position of importance in a company like Crowley Maritime and its companies that work with firms around the world and offers a long list of specialized services.

Crowley Maritime Corp. is a U.S.-owned-and-operated marine solutions, transportation and logistics company providing services in domestic and international markets through six operating lines of business: Puerto Rico and Caribbean liner services; Latin America liner services; logistics; marine contract solutions; deep sea petroleum transportation; and petroleum transportation, distribution and salesin Alaska.

It supports all six of its primary business segments with centralized corporate operations, including purchasing, human resources, information technology, public relations and advertising, training, travel and facilities development.

In addition, it often provides vessel design, construction management and vessel management services for company-owned vessels that are chartered for use in our operating lines of business.

Crowley Maritime was founded in 1892, when Thomas Crowley purchased an 18-foot Whitehall boat to provide transportation of personnel and supplies to ships anchored on San Francisco Bay. Today, his grandson, Thomas B. Crowley Jr., is the chairman, president and chief executive officer. The present structure, in which Crowley Maritime Corp. serves as a holding company for business lines and all subsidiaries, was put in place in 1992.

The company is wholly and privately owned by the Crowley family and Crowley employees.