Leading US avocado marketer Calavo Growers has announced that it suffered a considerable drop in net profit through the second quarter of the year, with income standing at US$2.4m, down 50 per cent from the US$4.8m recorded last year.
This came despite revenue growth of some 9 per cent year-on-year, with sales up to US$118.7m from last year's US$109.2m.
According to Calavo, income was hit mainly by soaring costs in the group's prepared avocado business, the result of insufficient volumes of fruit and weather-related delays of fresh tomato shipments, Reuters reported.
'Insufficient volume in the marketplace at present is creating over-reliance on fruit sourced from Mexico and causing avocado prices to surge,' said CEO Lee Cole. 'These high prices are indicative of the strong industry demand for fresh avocados, but have precisely the opposite effect on our prepared guacamole business: soaring fruit costs are constraining margins in that segment.'
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