Divine Flavor LLC, which is located in the Rio Rico Industrial Park north of Nogales, AZ, is building a new 90,000-square-foot state-of-the-art warehouse and office complex on a 22-acre site on Mariposa Road in Nogales, which is expected to be ready next October in time for the 2014-15 season, according to Pedro Batiz, vice president of sales.

“We are breaking ground next week,” Batiz told The Produce News on Nov. 25.

“It is going to be a green warehouse” with solar panels, he added.

The new facility will be the company headquarters, Batiz said. In addition, Divine Flavor will continue to have an office in San Diego.

At the Divine Flavor warehouse in Rio Rico, AZ, were Antonio Escobar, who is new to the sales department, Clarisa Batiz, who handles organic sales, and Luis Batiz, who oversees greenhouse sales. The facility will have sufficient capacity to house 300 loads of product, he said. “This is to enable us, as the company continues to grow, to accommodate the volume that we are going to be receiving.”

The company continues to increase in volume, but much of that growth is coming from extending the season on various products. “The volume is more spread out through the year” than in the past, Batiz said. “We are focusing our growth in a very disciplined way.”

The company has farming operations in seven different states in Mexico — Morelos, Guanajuato, Jalisco, Sinaloa, Sonora, Baja South and Baja North, Batiz said.

The company’s main commodities are bell peppers, European cucumbers, table grapes and seedless mini-watermelons, he added.

But being focused on flavor as the company’s name suggests, Divine Flavor is not content with simply growing the same varieties of each commodity as everyone else. “Divine Flavor has a very strong R&D program focusing on flavor, mainly,” and including varietal research, Batiz said.

In the pepper category, for example, “we are basically growing new varieties of peppers,” he said. “We are farming, now, the mini blockys [blocky style mini-sweet peppers]. We are also farming the sweet long” peppers. In both types, they are available in “all three colors — red, yellow and orange.”

Divine Flavor is also increasing its production of European cucumbers, Batiz said. “And we are transitioning from shade to greenhouses in most of the acreage that we are farming.” Some of the greenhouses are “mid-tech,” and some are high-tech, he said.

On sales at Divine Flavor, in addition to Batiz, are Luis Batiz, Carlos Bon and Antonio Escobar. Escobar is new on the sales desk this season but “came from within the company. A graduate of San Diego State University in international commerce, he has been with Divine Flavor for three years but was recently promoted from sales coordinator to sales manager.