Empaque Don Jorge, part of the family business’ of El Grupo Crespo and hometown pack house to Crespo Organic Mangoes & RCF brands opened it’s doors for the season last week. The opening is highly anticipated for Crespo Organic customers, as it should help alleviate some of the pressures that the market is currently experiencing on the organic side due to larger than expected demands as well as the transitioning of harvest from the southern regions to the northern regions, which should slowly occur over the next month. Long travel times from the south coupled with check point delays and long border crossings times, not to mention the domestic trucking pressures, has placed considerable stress on the over all system. Empaque Don Jorge’s convenient location in Rosario, Sinaloa makes the drive time to the major ports of entry (McAllen and Nogales) less than a day away.
Empaque Don Jorge, built by Roberto Crespo Fitch in the 1980’s as a global growing, packing and shipping hub for fresh Mexican mangoes, is the second largest mango pack-house (largest capacity) in Mexico with maximum daily pack-out capacity of 14 truck loads per day. The pack-house hosts 7 (new) USDA supervised hydrothermal tanks, 7 cold rooms with up to 325 simultaneous pallet cooling slots . The pack house includes a separate packing section or Canadian non-treated fruit.
Empaque Don Jorge (EDJ) has gone through considerable transformation the past 3-4 off season, replacing almost all the machines with more state of the art, advanced machinery. Shiny new sorters, washers, sizes, and conveyers cover over 100,000 SF of packing space; optimizing efficiencies. The makeover helps EDJ reduce costs and speed up production, all while maintaining the highest standards in food safety and sustainability as well as providing a safer work space for the over 500 (peak season) employees.
Empaque Don Jorge not only packs the fruit for El Grupo Crespo’s own brands; but they offer packing and shipping services for many Nayarit, Michoacán and Sinaloa growers, packing in a variety of conventional brands for the USA/Canadian markets. The pack-house will operate from now through late August this season, with over 3.5 million cases anticipated to move through it’s production lines.
The opening of EDJ offers Crespo Organic Mangoes the ability to make sharper and more nimble choices during this extraordinary organic demand, commanding better control over customer fill rates. Expect more attractive price points as the season enters into the more voluminous regions, as well as an increased ability to place specific sizing and varietals in distinct ports of entry, and an expanded capability for large volume orders.
Crespo Organic Mangoes aims to increase the consumption of organic Mexican mangoes globally with high-quality consistent product and consumer driven commodity education. Seeking to help change and drive perceptions of Mexican-organic agriculture, people, and culture as well as develop and promote sustainable agricultural growth and markets for Mexican land and people for generations to come.
Source: Crespo Organic Mangoes
