Village Farms International, headquartered in Eatontown, NJ, will be represented at Southern Exposure Retail & Foodservice Conference & Expo in Orlando, FL, this year by Douglas Kling, senior vice president and chief sales and marketing officer; Bret Wiley, vice president of sales operations; Steve Poklemba, regional sales manager and Alan Kleinman, eastern district sales manager.

Prime Time Sales LLC in Coachella, CA, exclusive sales agent for Prime Time International, which specializes in bell peppers year-round with production in Mexico and California, has in recent years added mini peppers to its offerings.

“This is our third season of growing them in Culiacan [Sinaloa, Mexico],” said Mike Aiton, marketing manager.

Movement for Mexican-grown tomatoes this winter has been “very good across all parts of the country, and prices have been … above the minimum until this past week” when volume increased, said Joe Bernardi, president of Bernardi & Associates Inc. in Nogales, AZ, Feb. 8. “Now we have come into our typical heavy February volume, and prices are at or near the minimum on pretty much all the tomato items. We continue to have good distribution around the country. That is where we are currently.”

“The biggest change we have from the past” for the spring deal this year is that “our Roma tomato deal will be a lot larger than it was last season, said Jorge Quintero Jr., managing partner of Grower Alliance LLC in Nogales, AZ. “We are expecting a Roma tomato deal … of about 500,000 boxes, which is a significant increase” from the 150,000 boxes of Romas the company shipped in the spring of 2012.

The deal will start in March and run to the middle of June, he said.

Many colored bell peppers grown in Mexico, particularly blocky-style peppers, are grown in shadehouses, but the majority of green bell peppers are still grown open field. Many elongated red bell peppers are also grown open-field.

But at Malena Produce Inc. in Nogales, AZ, “what is new this year is we have green bell peppers grown under shadehouse down in Culiacan,” said Vice President Gonzalo Avila.

Daily Fresh Distributing Inc. in Nogales, AZ, now in its second year in business, will have primarily cucumbers, green and yellow squash and fresh grapes for its spring program this year, according to Paul Bachelier, who started the company in September 2011 after 18 years with Omega Produce Co.

The company had expected to also have green and red bell peppers through mid-March, but “we lost all our bells” due to a freeze in mid-January, he said.