Tony Godinez recently joined McAllen, TX-based Loop Cold Storage as director of business development.

Godinez has more than 20 years of experience in U.S. Customs brokerage, freight forwarding and third-party handling and logistics of fresh produce from Mexico. He started a U.S. Customs brokerage operation in 1994 and operated a 30,000-square-foot refrigerated warehouse, Godinez International, in Hidalgo, TX, for 18 years. In 2012, he took over the operations of another cold storage service provider in the Rio Grande Valley as executive director.

The Hawks Point Golf Club in Vidalia, GA, looked like a scene from “Pirates of the Caribbean” Feb. 8 as almost 300 costumed Vidalia onion growers and their families packed the Vidalia Onion Committee’s annual awards banquet and prepared to launch the 2014 season and the annual marketing campaign.

CBS Farms LLC in Watsonville, CA, has expanded its organic strawberry program this year.

The company, which has strawberry production in both Oxnard, CA, and Watsonville, has added organic strawberries to its Oxnard program and has also increased its organic acreage in Watsonville, according to Charlie Staka, director of sales.

Chelan Fresh Marketing plans to promote two premiere products — Canadian apples and Pacific Northwest cherries — at this year’s Canadian Produce Marketing Association Annual Convention and Trade Show in Vancouver, BC, April 2-4.

Serving as a link between growers and retailers, the company — which represents more than 419 growers from its headquarters in Chelan, WA — has been moving quality tree fruit since 2004.

At the April CPMA Convention and Trade Show in Vancouver, outgoing CPMA Chair Walt Breeden of The Oppenheimer Group will hand over his duties to incoming Chair Bernadette Hamel, vice president of national procurement-produce for Metro Richelieu Inc. Hamel is no stranger to the CPMA, having served on the executive committee since 2010 and as convention chair for the 2013 Toronto convention.

“I’m very excited at the prospect of having the opportunity of being a key player in participating and improving our industry,” said Hamel.

California shipped a record volume of fresh grapes during the 2013 season, surpassing 100 million boxes for the second time in history, the California Table Grape Commission announced in a March 20 press release.

The final tally for the 2013 harvest showed a total of 117.4 million boxes of fresh California grapes (116.2 19-pound equivalents) shipped, with a total crop value of $1.7 billion, according to the release. The season started with shipments in early May and continued into February 2014.