“We are going to see a delay” of two to three weeks in the start of many spring commodities out of Mexico, due to cold weather in January, said Luis Corella, a salesman in the Nogales, AZ, office of Fresno, CA-based Crown Jewels Produce Co.

But while the products may come in a little later than originally expected, they will come in “with pretty good volume,” he told The Produce News Feb. 8.

For growers of some commodities in some areas of northern Mexico, particularly in northern Sinaloa and southern Sonora, the mid-January freeze also caused significant crop losses. But Crown Jewels’ growers fared better in that regard than some others. “There was very little damage” to most of the company’s fields,” Mr. Corella said.

“We were in an area that did have that cold snap come through” and “actually lost one of our squash fields,” he said. It was the smaller of two fields, and the larger field “we managed to salvage … so we are actually coming in with decent volume.”

Prices rose on squash following the freeze, and for Crown Jewels at least, the increase in prices has compensated for the loss of product, Mr. Corella said.

Supplies of Italian and yellow squash may be tight, but “we actually do have product. We did not stop receiving this whole time. We did not gap at all, so we were in a pretty good situation because we were diversified in terms of growing areas,” he added.

As of the first of March, Crown Jewels will still be shipping product out of Culiacan, Sinaloa, and will start seeing strong volumes out of Sonora, he said.

In Culiacan, “we’ve got our bell peppers, our cucumbers and our eggplant coming.” None of those were damaged by the freeze, he said. “All that happened was basically a slowdown in production because of the cooler weather. But we are seeing volumes ramp up as time progresses here.”

Weather has been favorable since the freeze, but peak volume will come later than expected.

“That might mean that we will go later into the season than projected,” he said. “Whereas we might have been thinking of finishing the season in late April, we are [now] thinking the season might extend to the middle of May on some commodities out of Culiacan.”

In Sonora, the La Costa area of the Hermosillo district “is going to get started around the 5th to 10th of March with squash,” Mr. Corella said. About that same time, production in Guaymas “should be slowing down,” but there will be “a tremendous increase in volume” of yellow, green and gray squash “coming out of La Costa.”

Crown Jewels expects an increase of perhaps 20 percent in its Italian and yellow squash out of Guaymas this year, he said.

Crown Jewels also has a substantial watermelon program this year, with the addition of two new growers. “It is going to be basically a revamped program on our watermelons” with a larger volume, Mr. Corella said.

The company will have mini watermelons as well as regular-sized seedless watermelons this year. Crown Jewels has handled some mini melons in the past, but “this is the first time we have done them directly through a grower.”

The company expects also to see an increase in its Sonora grape production this spring, Mr. Corella said. “We have brought along some additional growers on that commodity as well.”