New Jersey back up to a full crop of peaches this season

“Normally we’d start packing our early peach varieties in the last week of June. But it looks like this year it will be more the first week of July,” says Jeff Danner of Eastern Propak in Glassboro, NJ. “We’ve had a cool, damp spring and a lot of rain.”

That puts this year’s crop at slightly higher levels than last year’s, which also suffered due to weather. “The bloom certainly indicates it and the fruit set on the tree indicates it as well. I think it’s going to be a traditional full-crop year,” Danner says.

He also anticipates pricing to be more “normal” and not at the historic levels they rose to last year thanks to an overall crop shortage. “The South is in it the whole time we are but last year they lost 75 percent of their crop from weather,” he says. “This year they have almost a full crop. They’re a little bit light early on but that will straighten out and be in full crop status for the rest of the season.” At the same time, peaches are also coming from California.

This kind of outlook is welcome news to Eastern, which is opening a 70,000 square foot addition. The new facility will include 5,000 plus pallet positions and 15,000 sq. ft. of repack area. In addition, it’s also adding two bagging lines on top of its four existing lines to handle, in part, import citrus. The planning for the expansion has been going on for two years and ground was broken on it last fall.

“We’ve gone through some pretty significant growth over the last 12 years. And with the relationships with our importers, they’ve grown and we’ve grown too, so we couldn’t service them any longer to the level they wanted,” Danner says. “We had to expand.”