New and exciting things are always happening at Baldor Specialty Foods, headquartered in the Bronx, NY.

“We’re announcing the official opening of our Washington, DC, facility,” Michael Muzyk, president, told The Produce News. “Although we’ve owned the building for about two years, during its renovation we used it only as a cross-dock. We built it out using the same high criteria that went into the construction of our Boston and our Hunts Point [in New York] facilities.”

Cleaning up the 2013 shipping season on April 1, Maverick Potato Co. in Center, CO, is headed into its second season with shed upgrades and plans for increased production.

Company President Roger Christensen, a veteran San Luis Valley potato grower/shipper, said the company had a great start with the 2013 crop, running 200,000-plus cwt through the shed.

High retail prices and increasing supplies have resulted in a cooling down of a cauliflower market that was hot during much of April.

Denny Donovan, sales manager of Fresh Kist Produce LLC in Santa Maria, CA, said warm winter weather was the genesis of the situation.

"A warm winter helped speed up the cauliflower crop. In March, we were harvesting the cauliflower that was supposed to be sold during the first two weeks of April. That moved everything up, and for the past two-and-a-half weeks cauliflower has been very short," he said the last day of April.

Shuman Produce Inc., a leading grower-shipper of Vidalia sweet onions, headquartered in Reidsville, GA, has promoted its long-time marketing coordinator to marketing director and has added three new members to its staff.

With new federal produce safety standards coming soon, the leafy greens industry could use some good news and, last month, Canadian authorities reassured consumers that leafy greens are safe to eat after reporting over 99.9 percent of fresh leafy greens it tested had no detectable pathogens.

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency tested 4,250 samples of domestic and imported, whole and fresh-cut fresh leafy vegetables available at retail in Canada as part of a five-year project. Starting in 2008-09, CFIA has collected more than 10,000 samples, many of which are still being analyzed.

Sun World International LLC has named Moonlight Sales Corp., headquartered in Reedley, CA, as its newest licensee, enabling the Moonlight family of companies to access and expand Sun World's renowned peach, plum, nectarine and apricot varieties along with marketing its premiere brands.

Moonlight is an industry-leading farming company specializing in product branding and retail merchandising strategies. It is owned by brothers Russ and Ty Tavlan, who also manage the company's growing, packing, marketing and distribution of product grown on its farm holdings.