Calavo Growers Inc. announced the completion of the expansion of fresh avocado packing operations at its Uruapan, Michoacán, Mexico, facility to keep pace with strong consumer demand.

The company, a global avocado-industry leader and an expanding provider of value-added fresh food, said that the upgrades provide Calavo's Uruapan packinghouse with the capacity to pack at least 6 million pounds of fruit per week -- a 200 percent increase over prior output.

In the mid-1990s apple growers in California were producing 10 million boxes of apples annually. Today, growers there produce between 2.5 million boxes and 3 million boxes, and that number has held as about average over the past several years.

Alex Ott, executive director of the California Apple Commission in Fresno, CA, told The Produce News that in the 1990s, mostly Fuji and Granny Smith apples were produced in the state.

Kennett Square, PA, bills itself as the Mushroom Capitol of the World, and producers there grow about 65 percent of the nation’s mushrooms. In the early 1980s, annual dinners were held there, and in 1985 the gatherings became more formalized with the Mushroom Festival, a celebration held the second weekend of September each year in downtown Kennett Square.

Starting in 1992, official proclamations of September as Mushroom Month from the U.S. secretary of agriculture and the governor of Pennsylvania added more formal recognition and notoriety.

Fruit Royale Inc. in Delano, CA, offers a wide array of grape varieties for the fall season, including several new proprietary varieties. In fact, the period from September on is “basically my whole program” except for Flames, said Louie Galvan, a partner in the company.

But the “mainstay” varieties for the company are Red Globe, Crimson and, “later in the deal,” Autumn King, Mr. Galvan said Aug. 7. “We will have promotable volume ... all the way into December,” with an emphasis on those three varieties.

Tavilla Sales Co. of Los Angeles has changed its name to Vision Produce Co. to mark the fact that it is a different company than it was when President Bill Vogel founded it in 1980.

FRESNO, CA — Wyatt Torosian, 21-year-old son of Atomic Torosian, a partner in Crown Jewels Produce Co. here, joined the company on the sales desk on Sept. 21, about nine months after graduating from the University of California-Los Angeles.

He is the second member of the second generation in the company. Robbie Mathias Jr., son of Rob Mathias, also a partner in Crown Jewels, is also in sales and has been for several years.

Mr. Torosian told The Produce News that in addition to doing sales, “I am also assisting with business development.