Miami, FL-based Crystal Valley Foods expects to grow its Peruvian asparagus business at a significantly greater clip than the overall increase in volume this season.

Sourcing Manager Rodolfo Liau Kang anticipates a double-digit increase in sales for the firm, while he thinks overall asparagus exports from Peru will not be that high. But he does expect the South American country to increase its export volume this season.

“For the last couple of years growers have been talking about closing fields and switching to avocados and other crops,” he said. “But as fields are being closed, others are being opened up. The end result is that I think there will be more volume.”

And for Crystal Valley Foods specifically, he said the development of some new programs for U.S. retailers should lead to a 12 percent increase in volume this year. The Crystal Valley executive said the firm has an advantage over other importers because “we are one of the few importers that stay with Peru 52 weeks of the year.”

He said this allows the firm to work with growers on a year-round program and be a little bit more flexible on pricing at any given point as long as the total returns for the year are where they need to be. That flexibility allows the company to build solid programs with U.S. retailers.

Green asparagus will represent the vast majority of what Crystal Valley ships, but Liau Kang said the firm would import some purple asparagus with the goal of increasing that production the following year.

“It’s too early to talk about it but we are working with a grower on a new purple asparagus deal for next year,” he said.

The company will air freight the vast majority of the production it sells, but Liau Kang said, “Ocean freight has to be part of the formula” to again allow for increased flexibility in pricing, especially ad pricing.

He explained that the difference in price between air freight and ocean freight can be as much as $7 per carton. When volume is down and there is plenty of air freight space available, the difference can be only a couple of dollars per case, which is why most grass is air freighted during the lighter volume periods.

But as volume increases tremendously in September and October, air freight space is at a premium and the added cost might not be able to support an aggressive retail ad price.

As he surveyed the world market, he said there are a couple of developing trends that could cause an upward pressure on the price of Peruvian asparagus for this year, as well as in future years.

“China used to be an exporter of asparagus,” said Liau Kang, who is Chinese-Peruvian, “but now they are consuming all of their own asparagus and becoming a new market.”

And he said Europe is also increasing its consumption. European consumers have always been partial to the larger sizes of asparagus, but this year “they are taking standard size as well.” If that continues, he said demand for all asparagus sizes will increase.

On July 23, Liau Kang was reluctant to predict where the price will be in a month, but he said it was starting to fall closer to promotional levels.

“We are planning to start promoting in mid-August but we have to wait about two more weeks to see what will happen [with supply and demand],” he said.

On July 23, he said the f.o.b. price was around $25, having dropped quite a bit over the previous seven days. For a good promotional price at retail, the f.o.b. needs to be near the $20 per-case level, according to most experts.