Even as more global players in the avocado industry are gaining or seeking access to the ever-growing U.S. market, Calavo Growers Inc., in Santa Paula, CA, continues to focus, in its domestic marketing, on just two sources of origin — California and Mexico.

“The program here for the U.S. is still almost exclusively California and Mexico for Calavo,” said Rob Wedin, vice president of fresh sales and marketing, in an interview with The Produce News.

Calavo does export some Chilean avocados to Europe, but “we have not been handling Peruvian fruit at all,” Wedin said. Mexico’s production continues to increase, and additional groves in Mexico are being certified for export to the United States.

“We feel that with these increases in Mexico, we are going to have … the volumes to keep us going the way we want to go” and at the same time have “the freshness we are looking for.”

In the global context, the United States is the largest export market for avocados and is “the best-priced market for the most part,” he said.

Wedin has long maintained that demand for avocados in the United States has been growing at the rate of about 15 percent per year, although actual consumption, while continuing to trend upward, varies from year to year depending on availability. In 2014, supplies did not increase significantly, even though Peru came with a larger volume of fruit, because Mexico’s volume was fairly steady from the year prior and California volume declined, he said.

This calendar year, U.S. consumption was expected to be about 1.7 billion pounds, Wedin said. For 2015, he expected consumption to be closer to 1.9 billion pounds. It will top 2 billion pounds soon, but probably not in 2015. He recalled the 500 million pound crop just 21 years ago, when California had the U.S. market to itself, and the market couldn’t absorb that volume. It “just about put growers out of business,” he said.

Clearly, health-minded consumers across the country have discovered avocados “as a super food,” and the advertising that Avocados from Mexico, the California Avocado Commission and the Hass Avocado Board are doing has helped promote that awareness, he said.

As of late July, the California avocado harvest was building toward its peak. August will be strong, but Wedin expected the California harvest to be 90 to 95 percent complete by Labor Day, much earlier than last year. “It has been a short crop, and growers have been able to pick and choose.”

The Santa Barbara district “used to pick in October and November. Now we encourage them to finish in August or early September because the markets have really changed,” he said.

Mexico was currently beginning to ship some off-bloom or Flora Loca fruit. By mid-August, “the Mexican new season will be in about its third or fourth week,” Wedin said. “We think we have a good eight to 10 weeks of off-blooms which have just started.” That will be followed by “the main part of the season, with a crop that he expected to be “a good 20 percent larger than it was” in 2012-13 or in 2013-14.

Although it has not yet been officially announced, it was appearing more and more likely that “come spring … there will be permission for [fruit from] avocado groves in Jalisco to come to the United States,” although “obviously there is quite a bit of logistics and infrastructure” that need to be put in place there.

At Calavo, “two things that continue to work for us” are bagged sales and pre-ripening, Wedin said.

The increases in bagged sales have been “just crazy,” and the company is increasing bagging production capability “at all three of our shipping locations” in California, Texas and New Jersey, he said.

Calavo is also “building additional ripe rooms in all three locations … so we can be sure we can continue to increase sales through the ripe programs.” Ripening has been a major benefit to the industry as a whole and “definitely to our company and our customers,” he said.