The acreage of melons being grown in southern Mexico by MAS Melons & Grapes LLC in Nogales, AZ, for the winter season will be a little higher this year than it was the last two years, according to Miguel Suarez, the company’s managing partner and sales manager.

“A couple of years ago, we downsized a little bit and came down to probably one-third of our production in southern Mexico,” Mr. Suarez told The Produce News. “We are slowly building up again, little by little. Right now, we are probably going to be up to about 40 to 45 percent of what we were the year before. the last couple of years, it was about one-third.”

Currently, MAS was marketing melons from the northern state of Sonora. “In Caborca, we are doing our Honeydews,” he said. “In Hermosillo, we are doing our watermelons. We are also doing a little bit of Kabocha squash” for the Japanese market as well as some Butternut and Kabocha for the U.S. market.

For the winter deal, he said, “we move to the state of Colima and the state of Nayarit” in southern Mexico for honeydew melons. The harvest will begin in Colima in late December and in Nayarit in early February.

Miguel SuarezIn addition to the company’s usual winter crops, “we are working on doing some deals” in broccoli and avocados for export to Japan. The broccoli would come from the state of Guanajuato and the avocados from Michoacan. “Those are deals that we are just beginning,” he said. “They are on a trial basis right now.”

For the present, the broccoli and avocados would be only for Japan, where MAS already does a substantial business in melons and, just recently, in grapes as well. “We are going to try to start a business on those products over there, and depending on what happens, probably we can bring them over here [to the United States] as well,” he said.

The company recently hired a second salesman in Japan, Kei Funakubo, who will be handling broccoli and avocado sales there, Mr. Suarez said. Also on sales in Japan for MAS is Toyoo Morakami.

Handling sales in Nogales, along with Mr. Suarez, are Ruben Carranza, Miguel Lopez and Mr. Suarez’ son, Mike Suarez.

So far, “we are having a good season,” Mr. Suarez said. The spring grape deal was good this year, as was the spring watermelon deal. This fall, “the honeydew deal has been good,” although “right now it is a little slow, but we had a very early and good beginning.”

MAS’s business in Japan keeps growing and now accounts to about 35 percent of the company’s production, he said. If “the new items we are trying” do well, that percentage could increase.

Kabocha is just a small part of the company’s Japan business, as “we are just beginning” with those, he said. But in watermelons and honeydews, “we ship anywhere from 14 to 22 loads a week to Japan.”

Grapes, which are a major portion of the business for MAS in the United States, are new for Japan. Just “this past Mexican grape season, we started going with grapes to Japan, something that we have never done before,” Mr. Suarez said. The company has marketed grapes in many Pacific Rim countries and throughout most of Southeast Asia, “but we have never done Japan, so this was new for us, with very good results.”