By
April 26, 2021
With more than 40 years of experience distributing fresh produce on the East Coast, Exp Group LLC continues to grow its network of production, importation and distribution of tropical fruits and vegetables from both Central and South America.
It has also implemented a robust food-safety program from domestic and foreign farms up to its warehouse.
“We are growing,” said Anthony Serafino, executive vice president for the North Bergen, NJ-based company. “It’s been a strange year because of the uncertainty of the coronavirus pandemic. We’ve been on a good trajectory for growth, so pandemic or not, we were lucky enough to have been allowed to operate being an essential business.”
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Regional shifts for banana supplies in North America
Supplies of bananas in North America are currently moving “like a chess game.”
So says Anthony Serafino of Exp Group, LLC based in North Bergen, NJ. He notes that following the hurricanes that hit Central America in 2020 Hurricane Eta in early November and then Hurricane Iota two weeks later there’d been warnings from multinational banana suppliers that pricing would be going up on the fruit and supplies would be scarce.
“But we’re not seeing that right now. There’s not the scarcity of banana supply I thought there would be,” says Serafino. However, to make that happen, supplies to regional markets are shifting.
Pineapples are seeing unusual movement for the holiday season.
“Christmas is an interesting time because this is usually when pineapples are in a very good position market-wise. But 2020 has been a weird year for some commodities and we feel the market is a bit oversupplied. The movement is just not there on the wholesale side. There’s a lot of availability that we’re seeing,” says Anthony Serafino of Exp Group, LLC based in North Bergen, NJ.
He does note that with tropical commodities in general, movement patterns can turn fast thanks to factors such as weather conditions from supplying countries in South and Central America. “This though is the time of year that pineapples move like watermelons in the summer. But they haven’t been moving,” says Serafino.