Frank Ramos, owner and president of The Perishable Specialists, a customs house broker headquartered in Miami, has been clearing asparagus for a long time so he knows this is the calm before the storm.

“Of course asparagus comes in year-round, but we are in a light period right now just getting ready for the seasonal spike that will come in September,” he said.

Maurice A. Auerbach Inc., the Secaucus, NJ, importer, exporter and distributor, sells a bit to the Southeast, Midwest and Canada, but its main focus is on the Northeast corridor.

“Our strength lies in serving the New York-New England area,” said company President Paul Auerbach.

He quickly added that the firm sells as far south as Atlanta, as far west as Chicago and as far north as Quebec in Canada. “We have good accounts in Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Baltimore, Atlanta, all over New York, but that New York up to Boston and New England corridor is in our bread basket.”

As the California table grape industry moves deeper into a season that is expected to produce a record-breaking crop for the second year in a row, with demand so far keeping pace, John O’Rourke, president of RJO Produce Marketing in Fresno, CA, talked to The Produce News about some of the factors driving the industry’s success.

PORT OF WILMINGTON, DE — When the recently completed Chilean fruit season began, no one anticipated the volume of product that would be coming up the Delaware River to the port of Wilmington for handling by Murphy Marine Services, here. What first looked like a normal year turned turbulent, and in late June the company was “still winding down from a pretty hectic season,” said President John Coulahan.

When the final snow survey for the year was taken in early May in California’s mountains, the snowpack was only 17 percent of normal, which meant California farmers were not going to get their full allocation of water.

At the time, the California Department of Water Resources predicted the water projects would deliver 35 percent of the contracted water allocation, but that has since been scaled back to 20 percent, with only 10 percent expected next year under normal rain conditions. Anything less than normal is expected to result in a zero allocation from the water projects.

Demand for avocados is seeing significant growth in the United States and in the global market as well. That increased demand has enabled McDaniel Fruit Co. in Fallbrook, CA, to experience business growth for its California fruit as well as for its import programs.

“Of course, we are a U.S.-based company out of California, and our California program has continued to enjoy, just like the rest of the avocado industry, great growth in demand” from existing and new customers, said company President Rankin McDaniel Sr.