“New this year, Duda Farm Fresh Foods is offering ‘Celery Celebrations,’ a line of seasonal packaging that is designed to help spur impulse buys during critical holiday sales periods,” said Nichole Towell, marketing director for the Oviedo, FL-based company.

“The line features packs of 30-count sleeved celery stalks, 18-count celery hearts and eight-ounce zip-top celery stick packages,” she said.

Ms. Towell noted that the packaging is festive and features snowflakes to reiterate the holiday timeframe of the product’s availability, which began on Nov. 1.

IPR Fresh, which was founded in 2003, started out as a produce brokerage business, but “we have been growing on the shipper side as we distribute produce directly now” from growers in Mexico, said Jose Luis Obregon, president of the company, in an interview with The Produce News, one year to the day from the day he joined his brothers and father in the family business.

“We are just about to get started in the next week with our season,” said John Hurley Neer at Rene Produce LLC in Nogales, AZ, Nov. 14. Mr. Neer, who is in charge of business development at Rene, is based in North Carolina but covers the country for the company.

“We have increased acreage on all items” for the 2012-13 season and have added, for the first time, organic Roma tomatoes, he said.

“We are seeing tremendous growth” out of Nogales, said Luis Corella, who works in sales in the Nogales office of Fresno, CA-based Crown Jewels Produce Co., in an interview with The Produce News Nov. 16. “Basically, we are seeing an increase of anywhere between 30 and 40 percent” over last year “depending on the commodity

“We are working with new growers” in different growing regions of West Mexico, “and we are strategically located with them to where we are basically diversifying our risk” by having “two different growers per commodity in two different areas,” he said.

“We are well into our fall and winter watermelon season, and we are handling expanded acreage this season,” Gill Munguia, division manager for the Nogales, AZ, division of The Giumarra Cos., said Nov. 21. “We have also added mini watermelons or personal watermelons to the mix.”

The watermelons are being grown in Hermosillo and Guaymas in the state of Sonora, Mexico. The company was currently shipping out of Hermosillo but was “just getting ready to transfer from our northern farms in Hermosillo down to Guaymas,” where production would continue through the winter.

“Our overall program is similar to last year, as far as the products are concerned, but our acreage has increased just about across the board on everything that we grow, so we are building on the winter program,” said Mike Aiton, marketing manager for Prime Time Sales LLC, which is headquartered in Coachella, CA.