For its early Mexican mango season deal this year, Splendid Products LLC in Burlingame, CA, invested in a forced air cooling facility at its Michoacán warehouse.

“It makes a big difference,” said owner and manager Larry Nienkerk.

He explained that when loads come into the facility, the forced air cooling equipment can take the field heat out of the product in a much quicker timeframe. He added relying just on a cold room to do that job greatly extends the amount of time that the fruit remains at a high temperature. He said it has made a big difference with regard to arrivals of the fruit in the United States. The firm also has a forced air cooling facility for its northern Sinaloa deal so Nienkerk said Splendid can offer proper temperature control of the fruit throughout the Mexican season, which typically ships heavily to the United States from March through August.

Larry NienkerkTalking to The Produce News May 16, the Splendid Products executive mirrored the comments of others that the early part of the Mexican season this year has seen some strange marketing situations.

He explained that the grower community in Mexico — noting that they had less fruit on each individual tree — attempted to get much higher prices and ended up crashing the market to very low levels. “They didn’t take into account that there were new groves coming into production,” he said. “They were more concerned about what they didn’t have than what they did have to sell.”

He said there was less early fruit but the individual size of the fruit was also peaking at a smaller size than usual, so there was probably just as much volume, if not more, of small fruit as there was a year ago. Growers tried to get higher prices and retailers were not interested in promoting at those higher prices.

It is a well-known fact that it is promotions that move mangos through the U.S. marketplace. It is an item enjoyed tremendously by several different ethnic groups who will buy multiple pieces of fruit when the price is right. Nienkerk said the price didn’t get low enough, fast enough and the f.o.b. price plummeted. When retailers were setting their early May promotions, mangos were priced too high, according to Nienkerk. “Cinco de Mayo and Mother’s Day were very disappointing,” he said.

The promotions weren’t there and neither were the sales. The market through the first couple of weeks of May dropped to very low levels of around $3 per carton.

At the same time, other production regions, including Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Guatemala, were able to land fruit in Miami at a reasonable price and take the East Coast market away from Mexican shippers. “It’s been a very tough deal,” Nienkerk said.

He worries that this year’s problems will have a residual effect next year. Nienkerk said retailers often pull up last year’s ad program to refresh their memory as to what sold well on a week-to-week basis. Next year, when they look back at the late April-early May timeframe they are not going to see any mango ads. Instead they will see another fresh product that was plugged in this year and might have performed very well. “Instead of mangos, they are going to see pineapples or some other fruit,” he said.