Oso Sweet Onions, headquartered in Charleston, WV, will once again market top-quality Peruvian sweet onions to is clients this season. “We’re off to a great start,” President Brian Kastick told The Produce News on Aug. 12. “We’re very excited about everything.

Oso Sweet increased its plantings this season to respond to continued consumer demand. “Our programs in the United States and Europe will be significantly larger,” Mr. Kastick stated.

It is a “different” year for apple production at Gardeners, PA-based Rice Fruit Co., said John Rice, vice president of sales and marketing.

“The crop situation not as good as it was the last couple of years,” he said. “Volumes will be down by at least 15 percent due to lighter fruit set this year. We had some hail damage early in the season. When it’s cool and rainy for an extended period, the apples don’t pollinate as well as they should.

“The undamaged apples, however, are good size and quality,” he added. “We just won’t have as many as normal.”

Northeast Apple Sales, located in Newburgh, NY, continues to focus on marketing apples from the Champlain Valley and Hudson Valley regions of New York. The majority of the company’s apples are marketed throughout the northeastern United States.

“The crop is just now beginning to come in,” said Frank Tangredi, president of Northeast Apple. “We will start with Ginger Gold and Paula Red, and other varieties will follow behind.”

He said that New York apple orchards received adequate rain this summer, which has resulted in outstanding quality.

In August 2010, Hess Fruit Co. in Leola, PA, installed a new “Greefa” packingline. Fred Hess, president and co-owner with his brother Jerry Hess, told The Produce News that the equipment has been a great asset to the company.

“It’s working out extremely well for us,” said Mr. Hess. “We are using the internal sorting option more than we thought we would. It has the latest software for defect sorting and internal sorting. It was a major investment for our company, but it is enabling us to increase our daily production.”

The Peru, NY-based Forrence Orchards apple crop looks fabulous this year, said Peter Forrence, vice president of the company.

“We’ve had plenty of sunshine and sufficient recent rain to produce spectacular flavor,” he said. “We are very enthusiastic going forward. Our acreage is unchanged at about 1,100 acres, producing between 600,000 and 650,000 bushes, which is about where we’ve been in the last few years.”

“The stars seem to have aligned and things came together to result in what we feel should be the nicest apple crop in a while,” Lee Peters, vice president of sales and marketing for Fowler Farms in Wolcott, NY, told The Produce News. “We start harvesting Paul Red the week of August 15, and the following [week] we start harvesting Ginger Gold, followed a week later with the Zestar.”