“We are just finishing up our third season of Jalisco imports and looking forward to our fourth,” said Giovanni Cavaletto, president of the California-based sales agency. “This means we have the critical mass necessary to service the blue-chip accounts that exist in the U.S.”

Expressing the size of GLC in a different way, Cavaletto said the company imported more avocados into the United States in the 2024-25 fiscal year than the entire country of Colombia. He said significant growth in the coming years is a foregone conclusion.

“We have 3,000 acres of avocados in Jalisco,” Cavaletto said. “One third of those acres are trees that are less than five years old. Another third of the acreage is in areas that have not yet been certified for entry into the United States.”

That clearly means that GLC Cerritos’ exportable acreage could grow exponentially in the next few years as its young trees mature and more acreage is certified. Both factors are just a matter of time. In the case of the young trees, it’s a given that they will mature and will produce more volume as that is a known equation. It’s not quite as easy to guess when additional GLC acreage will be certified for U.S. export. “Who knows,” Cavaletto said. “There is work being done with U.S. and Mexican officials to certify more acres. How long it will take the USDA and Mexico’s ag agencies to respond seems to be unpredictable.”

It took many years before Jalisco was added as a potential supplier with acreage certification moving at a very slow pace, he said.

Turning back to what he can count on, Cavaletto expects GLC to see a volume increase of 20 percent in the 2025/26 year. The U.S. market may not get all of that increase. Cavaletto said GLC does export significant volume to both Canada and Asia as well as to Mexico’s domestic market, which is quite large as its annual per capita consumption of avocados tops the world.

Cavaletto said the company’s volume allows it to offer whatever pack and fruit sizes its customer want. “Our custom pick strategy lets us pack each box exactly how the customer wants it whether that is a standard carton, an RPC or bagged fruit. We are also offering a 4-kilo gift box that holds 16 avocados and is perfect for box stores. There are also a lot of ethnic stores that like to offer gift options.”

Cavaletto said the 2024/25 marketing year was a good one with strong pricing throughout the year. “We are proud of our own size curve,” he said, noting that GLC’s percentage of large fruit was much greater than the industry. “About 35 percent of Mexico’s import were 48s and larger while at GLC 63 percent of our fruit was in that category.”

He credited 21st century farming practices for that positive gap. “We use fertigation and annual pruning to grow our fruit,” he said. “It’s what we call active farming.”