Mexican avocados have two seasons, as Doug Meyer, vice president of sales and marketing at West Pak Avocado Inc. in Temecula, CA, pointed out in an interview with The Produce News Oct. 1.

The first is the Flora Loca crop which comes from an off-season bloom and precedes the main new crop and which started in August. This year, there has been "an unusually heavy volume in the Flora Loca crop," Doug Meyerhe said. "The quality is very good, so we've been bringing in a tremendous amount of new crop into the market since early August."

By mid-October, West Pak will be "transitioning into the next bloom ... called Aventajada," he said.

West Pak has its own sourcing team in Mexico as well as its own packinghouse and distribution facilities, and that has "really paid dividends," Mr. Meyer said.

Having "our own sourcing team" enables the company "to really keep a handle on this large crop," he continued. "It allows us to be selective in our buying. It gives us the ability to source and pick and pack the kind of fruit that our customers expect. We are excited because we are meeting customers' requirements" with "heavy volume coming out of Mexico."

California has had a good volume of avocados this year, and California fruit has dominated the market from spring through summer. By late summer, the transition into the 2012-13 Mexican season had begun. "There is still lots of fruit being harvested" in California, Mr. Meyer said.

"Because it was such a large California crop, we just basically complemented our program with this new crop Mexican fruit while still continuing with the heavy volume that California was producing this year." As of early October, West Pak was heavily involved in "two very large programs, California and Mexico." But by the end of October, "we will be transitioning out of California fruit and into Mexican fruit for a large part of our customers."

By then Chilean fruit will also "be entering the marketplace," he said.

"Quality has been very high" thus far on the Mexican fruit, Mr. Meyer said. "There has been a good maturity level for this time of the season, which has resulted in good eating quality for the avocados as well as ripening consistency. Those are really two key things we look for." It has been "very good," he continued. "We are pleased" with the Mexican crop this year in both regards.

West Pak Avocado Inc. in Temecula, CA, which celebrates its 30th anniversary this year and which is experiencing continued growth, is currently "in the midst of a major investment in personnel and infrastructure within the company," Mr. Meyer told The Produce News in an earlier interview in June.

"[We] are positioning ourselves for the next 30-plus years of growth within the industry," he said.

The company had just opened a new facility on the new Philadelphia Wholesale Produce Market in Philadelphia with full ripening and distribution capability, is a partnership with John Vena Inc. with whom West Pak has had a longstanding relationship.

In Chicago, also, "we are in a new ripening center" which is "a very similar program to our other regional ripening centers," Mr. Meyer said. It is a full ripening and distribution center located on the Chicago International Produce market in partnership with Atom Banana Inc.

"In south Texas, we also have a regional ripening and distribution center in Edinburg" operating within the facilities of Don Hugo Produce Inc.

"Here in Temecula, we are in the midst of moving into an entirely new operation located just a couple of miles away from our current facility," he said. By the end of the year, "we will be fully operational" there with additional cold storage and ripening capabilities and a new state-of-the-art packingline that "will give us tremendous output and efficiencies for the future growth that we perceive within our company."

At its Texas facility, "we have increased ripening capacity," Mr. Meyer said in the Oct. 1 interview. "We are continuing to reinvest in infrastructure -- in this case additional ripening capacity -- where we see the need, and as we look at the size of this Mexican crop this year, as well as the growth of our company, we realize that we needed to have additional capacity in Texas, which we [now] have." So we are in a position for meeting customer demand with the large crop that is coming and our ability to ripen and distribute it."