In the late 1990s, Reidsville, GA-based Shuman Produce Inc. dipped a toe in the Peruvian sweet onion market, looking to expand on the success it had found with its Vidalia sweets. What began as a test drive, soon grew into a significant part of the program and Shuman has become one of the larger Peruvian sweet grower-shippers in the United States.

The Peruvians are a perfect complement to Shuman’s Vidalia program, which is also among the industry’s largest. Peruvian sweets have the same sweet flavor profile and basic shape consumers look for — and Shuman focuses on — in its year-round deal, which also includes sweet onions from Texas, California, Colorado, Chile and Mexico.

Shuman Produce in Reidsville, GA, is known for Vidalia onions, but is also a leading importer of Peruvian sweets as part of its year-round program. (Photo courtesy of Shuman Produce)This year, Shuman’s company-grown Peruvian onion crop is coming a couple of weeks later than usual, same as Vidalia and Texas before it, due to a cold winter and cool spring.

“Past that, what we looked at last week was very good quality and now we’ve just got to make sure the onions are cured and firm and completely dry before we bring them into the U.S.,” owner John Shuman told The Produce News in mid-August, fresh back from a visit to his Peruvian operations. “Harvest is getting under way, it’s just later than usual.”

The Peruvian deal is far enough behind that Shuman projects industrywide that “it will be mid-to-late September before any volume is available in the U.S.”

“It’s setting up to be a good season, it’s a good quality crop in the fields right now,” Shuman said. “We’re already loading, we’re already getting a few across through the ports, but there won’t be mass volume until mid-September. They’ll start loading heavy this week (Aug. 11) and next week —heavier than we have been — but it will likely be mid-to-late September before volume is available for U.S. shipment. Between now and then we’re looking at a very tight market.”

Very little is left of the Vidalia storage crop, meaning the usual smooth transition industrywide between the end of that deal and the start of Peru is in question and some gap is possible.

“It was a very difficult summer in Vidalia,” Shuman said. “The industry got through the fresh season better than we expected based on the cold weather we’d had, but some of the effects of that weather started showing up in packing out coming out of storage. Our packouts across the industry in Vidalia were disappointing this summer. We’re glad to have it behind us and we look forward to moving into Peru where the crop looks very nice, just late.”

As the Peruvian product has upped its game over the past two decades, the availability of that onion in U.S. markets is no longer a sure thing unless grower-shippers produce their own crop, as Shuman does. The success of Peruvian onions and other produce in the United States has elevated Peru’s economy and created a booming industry.

“The U.S. is one of the most advanced consumer markets in the world,” Shuman said, noting that what Americans want, other countries soon want as well. “Every year you start to see more demand in other parts of the world, the taste buds of consumers become more educated and as [global] economies are improving, they’re starting to trend after certain products the U.S. has enjoyed for years. The U.S. develops these production areas and once that demand is satisfied you see Europe and Asia start to demand those products as well. That’s just a function of developing economies and countries around the world and that’s going to continue.”