Sunny Valley International, based in Glassboro, NJ, has been in business for more than 35 years, and is anticipating a strong domestic season in 2022, starting with South Carolina peaches.

“Right now, we are preparing for the South Carolina peach season,” said Tom Beaver, director of sales and marketing for Sunny Valley. “We will be shipping stone fruit with our partners, Belle Peaches, from May through August.”

South Carolina has a long, storied history with the peach, with records going back as far as the 1600s for peaches grown in the state.

While Georgia may be more associated with the peach, South Carolina outpaces its southern neighbor in production, growing 90,0000 tons a year compared to 40,000 for Georgia, according to the USDA.

Overall, there are approximately 15,000 acres of peach orchards in South Carolina and the numbers have remained steady over the last decade.

Keystone Fruit Marketing expects to get started with Southern peaches in mid-May and will go through early September, though the start of this coming season will be challenging.

Prima Wawona, a fully integrated stone fruit company, has completed a major rebranding: an updated logo, new website launch and new packaging.

Strategically bolstering its international presence in recent years, Oppy is among the first to offer South African plums to the North American marketplace following an eight-year hiatus.

As U.S. authorities tightened import regulations for Chilean plums following pest detection in early 2021, Sila Louw, who joined the leading grower, marketer and distributor in the interim to head its South African operations, proposed complementing Oppy’s plum offerings with fruit grown on his home soil — first arriving on the East Coast in late January.