With opening of a state-of-the-art cold storage facility in the Miami area, Crowley Maritime can boast about two top services it can offer to Peruvian asparagus importers: customs brokering and cooling services.

Eduardo Campos, director of logistics for Crowley Fresh, the new 40,000-square-foot cooling and warehouse facility, said the operation opened in February of 2013, about 20 months after the plans reached the drawing board. About half of the facility is under refrigeration with four different temperature chambers. Virtually any freight from dry cargo to frozen foods can be stored at the facility. And of course that includes imported fruits and vegetables, which have used the facility extensively during its first six months of operation.

Crowley Fresh is actually a joint venture between Crowley Maritime and Customized Brokers, which is a customs house broker owned by Crowley. While Crowley Fresh and Customized Brokers often work together to provide one-stop shopping for their import customers, Campos said the two companies operate separately. Milay Rodriguez, supervisor of traffic for Customized Brokers, reiterated this fact, stating that importers can use both services or either one, independent of the other.

For this current asparagus season, Rodriguez said Customized Brokers has been working very closely with the U.S. Department of Agriculture to extend the hours of inspectors so that overtime pay isn’t automatically charged for every load. She said a new protocol has been established so that inspector overtime does not kick in on any day until after 6 p.m. Previously, she said, importers had to pay for overtime after 4 p.m. Monday through Friday and all day on Saturday. Considering the protocol for fumigation calls for two hours of fumigation and six hours of aeration, virtually every load called for overtime.

“Now if it is fumigated early in the morning or even as late as 10 a.m., it can get through the process without requiring overtime,” she said.

Campos said this is a big cost savings per load for importers. However, both the Crowley representatives said that the process of importing fresh produce and moving it through the various USDA protocols is always a challenge and subject to flight delays and other problems. Consequently, both Customized Brokers and Crowley Fresh are 24/7 operations, according to Rodriguez.

Customized Brokers is headquartered in Miami, but the company also clears product in other ports throughout the United States and has personnel on the ground in several other ports, including Philadelphia, Houston and Long Beach, CA.

The firm is one of the larger customs brokers for Peruvian asparagus, doing about 70 percent of the volume that comes through Miami.

Rodriguez said the same protocol for Canadian-bound shipments of Peruvian asparagus that has been in effect the past two seasons will continue this year. Each importer will be allowed to ship two loads per week of non-fumigated asparagus from the port of Miami through the United States and into Canada in a sealed van. Canada does not require fumigation and this through-shipment protocol was established in 2011. The number of loads per importer was doubled last year and remains in effect this year. This is a tremendous advantage for importers who do not have to fumigate Canadian-bound product just because it is traveling through the United States.