Mexican Avocado Industry Reaping Fruits of Trade Deal

"Business has never been so good," said Perez, co-owner of Avocado Export Co., a modern low-rise packing house dwarfed by surrounding fruit trees.

Perez's crop is but a trickle in a river of avocados flooding the United States from Mexico, where exports have more than doubled in volume this year over last. The reason? Growers finally have attained unimpeded entree to the U.S. market after eight decades of barriers. Many packing houses are working multiple shifts to feed U.S. avocado demand, which is growing 15% a year.

"It is going to remain this way," Perez said. The opening of the U.S. market "has changed the industry for good."

So sure are Perez and partner Miguel Torres of a continuing bonanza that they hired 20 additional workers this year -- a 50% bumping up of the payroll -- and invested $4 million in a computerized sorting system to more efficiently box their Senor Avo brand of fruit.

What's driving growth in avocado exports is the elimination of trade barriers and sanitary bans that for most of the last century kept the U.S. market off limits to Mexican fruit. The boost also is thanks to the surprisingly strong growth in U.S. consumption. According to the Irvine-based California Avocado Commission, the state industry's marketing arm, total U.S. avocado sales will reach 440,000 tons this year, an 80% increase from the total consumed in 2000.

"Guacamole's gone mainstream," said John Loughridge, vice president of Coral Gables, Fla.-based Del Monte Fresh Produce Co., the fruit wholesaling giant that buys 90% of Perez's avocados and distributes them across the United States.

"The growth is due to avocados' favorable health aspects, the immigration trend and the popularity of Mexican cuisine," said Loughridge, who added that his company had come "from nowhere" to become the nation's second-largest avocado wholesaler partly because of its strong links to Michoacan producers.

Mexico has grabbed an increasing share of the expanding U.S. market. Benjamin Grayeb Ruiz, a Michoacan grower and current president of that state's growers and packers association, says Mexican exports will reach 100,000 tons this year, up from 42,632 in 2004. That would put Mexico on par with top-ranked Chile, which last year shipped 100,000 tons of avocados into the U.S. market.