NEW YORK: The volume of mangos imported from Mexico has outpaced the rate at which the fruit made its way into the United States last season.
“We’ve seen steady increases in the volume of mangos from Mexico,” said Chris Ciruli of Ciruli Brothers. “For the last two weeks, we saw an excess of three million cartons shipped every week, and I don’t see anything in the future to stop that.”
More fruit has made it across the border this season than at a similar point in the season last year. As of the week ending on April 25, 19.6 million cartons have made it to the United States from Mexico, which is an increase of almost 25 percent over the 15.7 million cartons shipped by the same week last season.
“There are about 4 million or more cartons of mangos in the system every week,” said Ciruli, “so that makes for a lot of good promotions.” On May 1, prices for a carton of Tommy Atkins 7s were between $4.50 and $5.00 at the Nogales, Arizona crossing, and prices for a carton of Haden 6s were between $4.00 and $5.00 at crossings through Texas.
“These are very reasonable prices,” said Ciruli. “There are lots of ads for Cinco de Mayo, but we’ll need a lot more ads for May, June and July to keep the crop moving.” Demand was not as good as it could have been earlier in the season because of bad weather on the East Coast. But Ciruli thinks summer will be good to fruit like mangos.
“There’s now better weather across the country and people are out and about,” said Ciruli. “People are shopping, kids are out of school, so I think we’ll see better movement.”
