FRESNO, CA — Atomic Torosian, one of the owners of Crown Jewels Produce Co., here, said that the company “prides itself in having a lot of varietal mix” in its table grape program out of the San Joaquin Valley.

Atomic TorosianCrown Jewels, which has been expanding its grape program in recent years, will see another year of expansion in its fresh grape shipments from California this year, according to Mr. Torosian. He expected volume to be up probably around 20 percent from last year.

“We are [finishing] the last of our grapes out of Mexico tomorrow, so they will all be out of the way” as the company’s San Joaquin Valley harvest gets rolling, Mr. Torosian said July 6. Already, “we started Flames here locally. We are picking on two ranches. One is in the Three Rocks area and one is in Delano.”

Crown Jewels works with several growers with ranches located in the Delano and Richgrove areas of Kern County, in the Exeter area of Tulare County, in the Reedley-Fowler-Selma area and the Three Rocks area in Fresno County, and in Madera County where “we have a late deal,” he said.

By the week of July 9, Crown Jewels expected to start Summer Royal black seedless grapes as well as some green seedless varieties — specifically Sugraone and Thompsons — Mr. Torosian said. “Then we go to the Princess variety, and we have the Chilean red variety. It is a big red seedless grape.”

Among the other varieties in the mix for Crown Jewels are Autumn King, Luisco, Sweet Scarlet, Scarlet Royal and Crimson.

“More and more companies like us are having that full complement of grapes,” Mr. Torosian said. “It offers the customer something different, something a little special.”

This year, Crown Jewels will be packing “quite a few of the grab-and-go bags,” he said. Also called gusseted or stand-up bags, and usually printed in high-resolution graphics, the bags are increasingly popular in the industry. “I understand a few [shippers] are already packing the grab-and-go bags,” he said. “That’s what I hear.” But at Crown Jewels, “we are more gearing for the holiday season, around Labor Day and Thanksgiving and Christmas. I think there will be quite a few shippers doing that.”

Crown Jewels plans on “putting the best of the best fruit, that has good size and good quality, the best we have, in those grab-and-go bags,” he said.

Other pack styles packed by Crown Jewels include two, three and four-pound clamshells, and traditional bags in 19-pound cartons, RPCs and polystyrene foam boxes, he said. “We don’t do plain packs like we used to, but we do gear up to pack a certain amount of fruit for the export market, Pacific Rim countries mostly.”

Most of the company’s grapes are packed in the “Crown Jewels” label, he said.

The grapes are loaded mainly at the Aslan cooling facility in Reedley.

Crown Jewels’ San Joaquin Valley grape program “dovetails with the other products that we do” during the summer and fall period such as apples and pears that are consolidated at the same cooler, Mr. Torosian said. Pears and apples are a “big program for us,” and the start of harvest for those items was “right around the corner.” That then “takes us into pomegranates the end of August,” he said