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Empaque Don Jorge Opens Amidst Heightened Demand & COVID-19 El Grupo Crespo’s Home Packhouse Offers Relief to Crespo & Other Brands *All photos are pre- remodel, new photos coming soon! El Rosario, Sinaloa, Mexico – Empaque Don Jorge I (EDJI) opened last week for the season. EDJI is the hometown packhouse of El Grupo Crespo family’s two brands, Crespo Organic & RCF, and Latin America’s largest hydro-thermal packhouse. Originally built by Roberto Crespo Fitch in the early 1970’s, the packhouse was recently revamped by Roberto’s children Malu, Roberto, Jorge, and Jose Angel. Today they run the family agricultural business (El Grupo Crespo). The siblings initiated the three-year modernization project in Fall 2016 and completed all upgrades last season. This season, all upgrades and modernizations are smoothly running. The group had hoped to travel with Crespo Organic customers to the packhouse at opening time, but the pandemic had other plans. A new campaign that the Crespo Organic marketing team hoped to launch this month educating on the modern facility was also cast aside. This campaign’s aim was to map the mango packing process visually from orchard-to-table, giving customers and consumers an up-to-date peak inside the newly revamped packhouse. For now, the older marketing campaign and videography will have to suffice, new footage is always emerging from Jorge Crespo, aka the #MangoMan, who is happy to show the orchards and packhouse from his perspective. All upgrades were designed to improve efficiencies, increase outputs, boost quality, and improve working conditions for workers, many whose families have worked at EDJI for over four generations. This season brings a new appreciation for better use of space as COVID-19 has made packing operations complex. The packhouse’ 100,000 SF floor space was rearranged with the revamp, and now includes an additional packing line, bringing the total…
Volumes, Quality, Opportunities, Uncertainties, Confusions & COVID-19 Chatter about ‘normal life’ is peppering the air these days: When will we be returning to it? What will it look like when we get there? What’s the economic forecast? …And so on, and so forth. Like pretty much everyone else, I don’t have answers to these particular questions. Expertise seems to be just more chatter and hypothesizing. I am just one voice in the mango industry, but I am, by nature, a seeker and sharer of information. I have applied this to my role in the mango industry and continue to share macro-level information regarding the mango industry as a whole and the micro level information regarding organic Mexican mangoes.
Ocozocoautla de Espinosa (Coita), Chiapas, Mexico Last February, El Grupo Crespo opened Empaque Don Jorge II (EDJ II) in Ocozocoautla de Espinosa, Chiapas, or – as the locals call it – Coita. This is not to be confused with Empaque Don Jorge (EDJI) – El Grupo Crespo’s original and main packhouse located in El Rosario, Sinaloa, Mexico. EDJ I’s total remodel finished last year, making it Latin America’s largest hydrothermal mango packhouse.
Everybody’s favorite mango varietal- the Ataulfo, up first Mexican mango season always opens with small volumes, and this season’s start promises much of the same. Cooperating weather has given way to an “on-time” start with the expected minimal volumes of organic Ataulfos. Growers expect fruit to arrive on US soil around the first ten days of February. The season generally begins in late January and runs through mid-September. The southern regions of Oaxaca and Chiapas are always first to begin. From there, the season moves north approximately every three to four months as warmer weather travels up Mexico, through Michoacán, Nayarit, and Sinaloa. Several regions eventually overlap, creating many peaks in production.
Fall crop update; Ecuador, Peru and Southern Mexico bloom watch Mexico’s organic mango season is a big one. Not only is Mexico the longest and farthest stretching of all the mango regions we import from, but it yields the most consumer demand and highest sales volumes. Now is when we start to monitor growth closely, paying attention to all the details leading up to the 2020 season onset. In organics, onset typically occurs in February. There are undoubtedly many unknowns this time of year, but we can begin to read the clues. These help us predict what nature has in store.
It’s complicated depending on who you ask….. Currently Crespo Organic is on the downside of peak of Kent season from Sinaloa. The Nayarit region has finished and all packhouses in that region have closed. Our orchards in Sinaloa, which dot the surrounding area of our hometown El Rosario and encircle our main packhouse, Empaque Don Jorge, are brimming with ample volumes and varied sizes. We are currently harvesting Kent mangoes and, in a few weeks, will be harvesting Mexico’s final variety- the Keitt. The best news to report is that the outstanding quality we have seen all season long is currently looking to trend the same through most of August, more than that, I find the foretelling of the end of the Mexican mango season difficult.