“Cuties” brand Clementines and Mandarins from Sun Pacific are available to retailers during the summer months for the first time, according to a press release, which states, “Summer Cuties are making their debut from June through October to satisfy warm weather cravings for this sweet, easy-to-peel fresh fruit.”

“The launch of ‘Summer Cuties’ makes our popular fruit available year-round — something our customers have been asking for to help them support and grow their citrus category sales during the summer months,” Barney Evans, vice president of sales for Sun Pacific, said in the release.

Summer “Cuties” originate in the Southern Hemisphere and will be inspected and packed at authorized licensed U.S.-based distribution centers, on the East Coast and one on the West Coast, according to the release. “Onsite ‘Cuties’ quality control representatives will ensure that all fruit meets or exceeds rigorous ‘Cuties’ quality standards.”

“‘Summer Cuties’ will deliver the high standards our customers have come to expect from the ‘Cuties’ brand because we are applying the same quality specifications we use on California ‘Cuties,’“ Evans said in the release.

“We are starting out conservatively,” Sun Pacific President Bob DiPiazza told The Produce News. “There is quite a bit of fruit that we have lined up with Chilean growers, but I wouldn’t say that we have maximized the potential of this by a long shot. We are proceeding cautiously. We have set our ‘Cuties’ specs down for everybody, and we have established quality control in Chile and at the packing facilities we are using here. We also have a licensing arrangement with one importer.”

“We will have a fairly good supply of the summer ‘Cuties’ this summer, but I wouldn’t call it a national coverage,” DiPiazza said. However, “we will be in some of the leading retailers.”

Although this summer’s program is more than just a pilot, he said, the reason for the cautious approach is that “we want to see how well we can meet our specifications with the contra-seasonal fruit. So far everything looks pretty good. The fruit that has been coming in has been, for the most part, meeting our specs at a pretty high percentage.”

Fruit that does not meet those specifications does not get packed as “Cuties,” he said. “We will evaluate how the season goes. If we are able to maintain a good supply of the quality that we need to meet our ‘Cuties’ specifications, then I would say we will increase our efforts next year.”

Although the summer “Cuties” program extends the “Cuties” season to essentially year-round, there could be a short gap between the end of the import season in October and the start of the next California “Cuties” season in late fall, DiPiazza said. “We are talking weeks, probably, but I can’t tell you for sure when the summer deal will end.”

Although the packaging for summer “Cuties” will bear a strong resemblance to that of the California-grown “Cuties,” the difference will be easy to spot.

“We gave the summer ‘Cuties’ a little different look so we could distinguish them from the California ‘Cuties,’“ DiPiazza said. “Our little icon character, ‘Li’l Zipper,’ has got a pair of shades on, and he is looking pretty spiffy there for the summer.”

The product is available in two- and three-pound bags.

“Our goal is to try to improve the quality of fruit that is purchased during the off-seasons, so that the customers are not disappointed by the Mandarins in the summer,” which could adversely affect their purchasing behavior in the fall when the domestic program starts up. “So this is really about trying to give the customer a consistent good experience with Mandarins,” he said.

“We are not pleased with a lot of the fruit that we see” coming into the United States during the summer, “and we think that doesn’t help the growth of the category for the domestic season,” said DiPiazza. “Really, what prompted us to get into this summer ‘Cuties’ program was to try to improve the consistency of quality in the summer so it doesn’t have a negative effect on our domestic season” and customers have a good experience with “Cuties” brand products year-round, he said.

Sun Pacific also has a Valencia orange program during the summer out of the San Joaquin Valley of California.