Melissa Hartmann DeBarros, director of communication for HLB Specialties, headquartered in Pompano Beach, FL, told The Produce News that although the company handles several offshore products, it’s strength is in papayas.

A major winter storm whipped through the Northeast Feb. 8, dumping up to three feet of snow in parts of New England and disrupting produce distribution in the area.

Skip Cavallaro, president of John Cerasuolo Co. Inc., located on the New England Produce Center in Boston, told The Produce News Feb. 11 that people in the area were concentrating on getting things cleaned up.

With the recent announcement that it is selling almost 900 of its stores to an investor group, Supervalu Inc. has articulated a new strategy that has it concentrating its efforts in three distinct business segments.

In late January, its new senior management told investors and lenders that those three sectors are its discount Save-A-Lot brand, its wholesale distribution operation and its five remaining traditional supermarket chains — Cub Foods, Shop ‘n Save, Farm Fresh, Shoppers and Hornbacher’s — that are all regional in nature.

PAETON BANGART joined Chelan, WA-based Chelan Fresh Marketing in December.

In his new role at Chelan Fresh, Mr. Bangart will handle a full line of domestic sales.

Prior to joining the company, he owned a winery and vineyard in Chelan that he ran full time for the past five years.

Mr. Bangart has been working in the produce industry on and off for the past 20 years. His family has been farming in the valley for over 80 years. When he was younger, Mr. Bangart said he would spend the summers working in his grandfather’s orchard.

Currently, “watermelons are light coming out of Mexico, and it will be like that, I think, for the next month-and-a-half,” said Jesus (Chuy) Lopez, president of Big Chuy Distributors & Sons Inc. in Nogales, AZ, in an interview with The Produce News Jan. 25.

Well-Pict Inc. in Watsonville, CA, which grows strawberries in several districts in California as well as in Baja California, Mexico, has developed a family of proprietary varieties that not only have desirable characteristics, but are also particularly suited to the districts in which they are grown and to the desired market timing.

According to Sales Manager Dan Crowley, the company’s 269 variety has long been “our horse in Oxnard, and we continue to have it that way.” But there have been some changes this season in the varieties being grown in Baja and in Santa Maria.