Eco Farms tray packs its California avocados
Eco Farms tray packs its California avocados
Eco Farms Avocados Inc. in Temecula, CA, endeavors to distinguish itself from others in the avocado business by the quality of its pack, according to President Steve Taft.
The company packs California avocados and also handles fruit from Mexico, Chile and Peru.
Steve Taft“On the foreign fruit,” he said, “we try to deal with some of the to growers and packers in each of those countries, so it should translate out to good quality fruit.”
In California, in addition to being able to control the quality of the pack, “we tray pack everything,” Mr. Taft said.
There are other packers of California avocados that do some tray packing as well, “but we tray pack 100 percent, and I think that makes a big difference,” he said. “I think that tray packing” in the California fruit “sets us apart, in a positive way, from a lot of the industry.”
When The Produce News talked to Mr. Taft July 25, Eco Farms was “right in the middle of the California heavy volume.” It would continue to be heavy for the next six weeks and then start to taper, he said.
“Mexico is just finishing the old crop, and by mid-August [will be] into their Flora Loca,” an off-season bloom that precedes the main new crop. Mexico’s volume for its 2012-13 crop “is supposed to be pretty heavy again like it was this past year,” Mr. Taft said.
“Peru is in the middle of their season as well, and that will start to taper, we think, in the next few weeks. Chile won’t be started, probably, till mid-September” or possibly the first of October, he said.
California, this year, “will go all the way through into November,” he said, “but volume will be tapering once you get to September.
“With all of those places” marketing avocados in the United States, “there is a lot of fruit in the market,” he said.
At Eco Farms, everything is “pretty much the same” as it has been in past years other than the increases in volume from various countries of origin. There is “just more of what there has been,” he said.
