Emil Serafino, vice president of the Exp Group LLC, in North Bergen, NJ, told The Produce News that the company is a leading grower, shipper and supplier of tropical products to New York and surrounding areas. The company’s line is very strong on processed bananas.

“Bananas and plantains are our biggest items,” said Mr. Serafino. “We have numerous ripening rooms and we continue to add new rooms over time.”

The Exp Group uses numerous labels on its wide variety of tropical fruits and vegetables.

Mr. Serafino said that this time of year the company is very busy with mangos from Haiti, which carry several different labels.

The company is a multinational group based on several companies, which together create an efficient network of production, exportation and distribution of tropical fruits and vegetables from the Caribbean, South America and Central America.

It has more than 40 years of experience in production operating and exporting world class fresh products to New York, Miami, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Puerto Rico, Canada and South America.

“The quality of our products is 100 percent guaranteed because we grow all our products on our own and our grower-partner farms,” said Mr. Serafino.

“With care, we handle every detail, from growing to the final distribution to our customers,” he said.

Mr. Serafino noted that growth in the tropical fruit and vegetable category is spurred by ethnic groups that have immigrated to the United States.

“In the 1930s and 1940s, the majority of immigrants were coming from Europe, but in the past 20 years that has switched to mainly Hispanic populations from Central and South America and the Caribbean,” he said. “Today a major part of our population growth is from these countries.”

When people immigrate to a new country, they bring their food cultures with them. Those recipes and food preferences are then passed down to their children and their children’s’ children.

“Fruits like plantains, bananas, coconuts and mangos, and root vegetables such as yucca, boniato, yellow yam, chayote and malanga are all inclusive in this culture’s list of traditional food staples,” said Mr. Serafino.

He noted that the plantain market has been very tight for the past couple of months.

“This has driven prices up, and they will likely get even stronger in the future,” he said.

“Our line of tropical root vegetables stays steady,” Mr. Serafino continued. “These are staple items in Latino diets.”

Latino and Hispanic populations make up about 30 percent of New York City’s residents. Miami reports that its population includes about one million Haitians. But Hispanics are also immigrating to towns and cities of all sizes across the country.

Exp Group’s distribution center is in New Jersey, but the company is headquartered in the Dominican Republic. It also has another headquarter office in San Carlos, Costa Rico, and installations in Santa Cruz, Mexico and in Nicaragua.

“We also handle product from Ecuador, Haiti, Honduras, Panama and Guatemala,” said Mr. Serafino. “Because of these multiple grower-partner relationships, our line of tropical items is available year round.”

The company also does a substantial business with avocados. Its green-skinned avocado program out of the Dominican Republic grows continually.