Mr. Lucky is greatly expanding its border warehouse services in Laredo, TX.  By this fall, a new cold warehouse and office complex will replace GAB’s current, out-grown facility.

Miguel Usabiaga, vice president of the company, said the move is being made "to meet and exceed customer needs.”

Mr. Lucky is the well-known brand name used by GAB, owner of fresh vegetable operations in Guanajuato, Mexico.  Covemex is GAB’s frozen vegetable brand.

Magic Sun, a leading hydroponic grower in Mexico, is seeing continued growth and demand in its original tomato product line.  Over the last two seasons, the company has expanded its program to offer year-round conventional and organic tomatoes, and recently added Bell peppers and blueberries to its retail offering.

“I’m very glad about the coming season,” Carlos Bon Jr., vice president of sales for Divine Flavor, said of the Mexican grape deal. “We’ll have great quality and great-flavored grapes.”

Sonoran production is expected to run late this year, but Bon said his firm won’t ship before the time is right. “We’re not named ‘Divine Early’.  We are ‘Divine Flavor,’ and we are very excited about our strong investment in new varieties.”

“Right now, the only thing for sure is there is a lot of uncertainty,” Miguel (Miky) Suarez said at the end of March, about two months before the managing partner and sales manager of Nogales’ MAS Melons & Grapes LLC expected Sonora table grape growers to begin shipping promotable volumes of grapes.

His input from Sonoran growers brought mixed signals, but one consistent message is that it won’t be a full crop of Sonoran grapes this spring.

The good news, according to Scott Rossi, is that “we really anticipate it will be a great market for Sonora district grapes” this spring. “There should be great demand to fill pipelines” created by shortages of late Chilean grapes.

“May will be a difficult month for U.S. retailers, and we’ll be ready to put out heavy volume in June,” said Rossi, who is the sales manager of Fresh Farms LLC.

In recent years, Grupo Molina plunged forward in developing its Mexican table grape business by extending its Sonoran vineyard operations southward to the state of Jalisco.

Tony Martinez founded Primo Trading Services in 2015 with a vision to do business better.

“My idea was to start something small where growers can just pick up the phone and have someone they could call on the other side of the border just like family” he explained.