Valued Partners:
Last week The Pacific Northwest experienced a once in 50 year’s snow event in April. Unfortunately, this happened at a time when most of our orchards were well into bloom for this year’s fruit crop. The cold temps, snow, hail and rain will certainly have an effect on crops, but it’s just too early to determine the extent of damage to our Pear, Cherry and P
lum crops.
We expect to have more clarity in the next 4-6 weeks of how much damage was done and whether we’ve got good bee pollination resuming. Until then, we are not bidding additional NW canned fruit. For those of you where we’ve already tendered bids, we will not be confirming any awards until we have a better sightline on what we can expect to pack for the season. Though certainly not our first choice, we retain the option of recalling bids, due to force majeure should our available tons fall far short of obligation requirements.
Again, our Field Manager is in daily contact with our Growers and we will communicate to you as we’re able and can provide more definitive answers. Our first choice, as always, is to provide as many high quality Northwest fruit cases as we can to our valued customers. We just felt it important to make you aware for your own planning needs.
Thanks and more soon –
Jon K. Holt
