Avocado Journey From farm to fork

behind the scenes of the production and exportation of avocados from Mexico.

Avocado Journey
Discover in video
The perfect plant

The perfect plant

Mexican growers developed a unique technique to create the perfect fruit. By manually taking the best of the Patron avocado plant (the branches) and the best of the Criollo avocado plant (the roots), and grafting from one plant to the other one, they literally hand make the most perfect avocado plant in the world. The results: the beauty of the Hass fruit with the strong roots of the Criollo plant. Hand grafting two trees together is a painstaking process, but in three to five years, the small tree will start producing up to 750 pounds of fruit per year, harvested by a team of pickers.

Harvesting

Harvesting

The pickers use a pole to pick the avocados directly from the tree, since knocking them to the grown can risk bruising the fruit. The strict quality control applied throughout the avocado growth process mandates that once the fruit touches the ground, that fruit can’t be exported.

Careful selection

Careful selection

Once they arrive at the packing house, samples are sliced and diced to ensure that only the perfect fruits pass to the next step of the process, where they will be washed and brushed until their natural wax shines through. Gleaming avocados pass through the rollers at the incredible rate of 25 avocados per second, a speed rate that the human eye can’t keep up with. An engineer spot checks the green flash using an electronic eye, a machine that houses three cameras and takes four photos per second of the fruit whizzing by, which are then analyzed. The camera can detect differences in size and any skin imperfections. Those that pass the quality test are sent by rollers to their allocated packers, who then quickly pack them into 55 pound crates; from there, in only 48 hours they make it to your supermarket shelves.

Quick transport

Quick transport

The avocados with less-than-perfect skins are designated to be turned into first-class guacamole, and only the best of that lot are uploaded into refrigerated containers to ensure that the differences in temperatures don’t affect the fruit that is exported.

Our commitment to quality. Exporting only the very best.

Each day we put forth our best effort to deliver the best avocados to their final destination, avocados that are full of flavour, with the creamiest texture, and with the quality that makes us the leaders worldwide. Our presence in the market all year long makes us stand out and allows us to stay close to you to celebrate all those special moments with a delicious guacamole as the ideal complement to your dishes.

An inspector from a third-party company tests the grower’s fruit for dry matter content to ensure that each orchard meets our requirements.

The enormous volume of avocados produced by Mexico requires a variety of very specific conditions from topographic and road conditions to equipment and infrastructure, which combine to make the process of growing avocados a very specialized one. Growers and packers must work by hand to preserve the fruit’s high quality attributes throughout the complex process, from production to distribution. Thanks to the rigorous quality control program devised and overseen by the USDA and Mexico’s Department of Agriculture, consumers are assured of getting consistent supplies of high quality Hass avocados from Mexico throughout the year.

An unsurpassed food safety program

In 2009, we invested in state-of-the-art technology that allows us to trace each avocado back to farm in less than one hour. And we will continue our commitment to food safety initiatives going forward.

APEAM, the Avocado Producers and Exporting Packers Association of Mexico, is dedicated to adopting rigorous world-class industry standards to ensure the production of avocados with unsurpassed taste, food safety, and quality. Producers are continuously developing good farming practice programs in their orchards by participating in Good Agricultural Practices (GAP) to avoid potential fruit contamination. To preserve the superior quality of our product, packers are enrolled in Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP) programs, which have yielded ample acceptance into various markets throughout the world.

Additionally, the Secretariat of Agriculture, Livestock, Rural Development, Fisheries and Food (SAGARPA) has started a program to allow avocado growers to certify in Systems Contamination Risk Reduction, Good Handling Training, and Use of Agrochemicals in order to support their efforts to export smoothly. The National Service of Health, Food Safety and Food Quality (SENASICA) reported that this new certification helps to assure the country of destination that the Mexican avocado export meets all the necessary safety requirements for trading.

Avocado producers in Mexico have diligently followed a meticulous phytosanitary control program to comply with general and specific international agreements made with countries that purchase farm and livestock products from Mexico. This has given our producers a place in the international market without agricultural threats to client countries. Additionally, APEAM has invested in an extensive reforestation program in USDA certified municipalities/growing areas, replanting nearly 4.1 million native pine trees with an impressive 91% success rate. This effort is in addition to other initiatives designed to keep our planet healthy.

We are able to ensure the highest quality and freshest avocados are available to you year-round.