With new hires in place, Avocados from Mexico (AFM) Chief Executive Officer Tim O’Connor said the team is “knee-deep in the swamp” in developing a new promotional program which will be rolled out in September. “We are in the throes of the refinement of ideas,” he added.

At Giumarra Agricom International LLC in Escondido, CA, “we are continuing to expand upon our services capacity, offering more distribution points and a greater variety of services at the distribution points from ripening to bagging to special packs,” said Bruce Dowhan, vice president and general manager.

The company now has distribution points for its products in Los Angeles, Escondido and Ventura, CA, as well as in Nogales, AZ, McAllen and Laredo, TX, Miami, Atlanta, Philadelphia, New Jersey, Kentucky and Chicago, Dowhan said.

Del Rey Avocado Co. Inc. has recently completed “a major remodel” of its packinghouse in California, according to Robert (Bob) Lucy, president of the company.

Del Rey has been operating out of the same facility for many years, and had outgrown the existing space, but was unable to enlarge the facility’s footprint due to space restraints on the site. However, “we were able to go up quite a bit, and we basically doubled our storage, which is just wonderful,” he said.

Brooks Tropicals LLC in Homestead, FL, has been growing “SlimCado” brand green-skin avocados for over 80 years in southern Florida. “Avocados are usually low volume one year, high volume the next. But these last couple of years have been more on the high side,” said Marketing Director Mary Ostlund in a written statement to The Produce News.

So far, the 2013 season is “looking good,” she said.

Like many California-based avocado packing and marketing companies, Mission Produce Inc. in Oxnard, CA, handles avocados not just from California but from other producing areas as well. Unlike some other companies, Mission Produce has made an effort to become vertically oriented in its import as well as its domestic operations.

“I think we have evolved into being more vertically oriented in all sourcing areas, trying to get as much ownership close to the ground as possible,” said Ross Wileman, vice president of sales and marketing, in an interview with The Produce News.

The Hass Avocado Board, which represents growers and importers of Hass avocados in the U.S. market, has for about the past year and a half been focusing primarily on nutrition research and nutrition marketing “in a way that supports the category as a whole,” according to Emiliano Escobedo, executive director of the board.