Coast to open new San Francisco warehouse
Coast to open new San Francisco warehouse
Coast Citrus Distributors Inc., and its sister company, Coast Tropical, both in San Diego, are in the process of building a new warehouse facility in Northern California to better serve the San Francisco Bay area.
Isabel FreelandCoast Vice President Isabel Freeland said in mid-May that the new 120,000 square foot facility should open around July 1. “It’s a lot bigger than our current facility, which is only 25,000 square feet,” she said. “We are going to be able to hold a lot more fruit and better serve our customers up there.”
Coast Citrus and Coast Tropical are major suppliers and importers of a number of different items including mangos, bananas, tomatoes, melons, avocados and, of course, citrus.
The new facility is being built in Union City, which is on the Oakland side of the San Francisco Bay about halfway between Oakland and San Jose. Freeland said it is being built with state-of-the-art temperature control in its refrigerated spaces, and features 12 banana-ripening rooms.
Turning her attention to the current mango season, the Coast Tropical executive joked on May 11 that she would rather not talk about mangos. During that post-Cinco de Mayo time period, the mango market was a bit depressed. Freeland said orders were slow following that decidedly American holiday as many retailers did not quite move as many mangos as they anticipated during that holiday week, and there was still inventory moving through the supply chain. “Maybe it was because Cinco de Mayo fell on a Tuesday,” theorized Freeland. “We didn’t get the movement that we thought we’d get.”
She said the production districts in southern Mexico were finishing up their harvest of mangos and production was transitioning to the north. As of this writing, packingsheds already have or soon will be opening in southern and central Sinaloa with Los Mochis in northern Sinaloa fast on its heels.
Freeland said the mango supplies were excellent at in May creating a bit of a supply exceeds demand situation. She said supplies will continue to be strong through May and throughout the summer. However, she was hopeful that promotions would catch up to supply and the market would strengthen moving forward.
