Avocados From Mexico

Avocados From Mexico was established in 2013 as a joint marketing organisation of two existing trade bodies: the Association of Avocado Exporting Producers and Packers of Mexico (APEAM), representing roughly thirty-four thousand Mexican growers, fifty-four thousand orchards, and ninety-plus packing houses in Michoacán and Jalisco; and the Mexican Hass Avocado Importers Association (MHAIA), representing the American importers and distributors who bring the fruit into the United States. The Irving, Texas organisation exists to build the American market for Mexican Hass avocados as a single brand, and to coordinate the food-safety, phytosanitary, and USDA-compliance apparatus that governs the trade — APEAM is the only association in Mexico cleared by the USDA to export avocados into the country.

The organisation runs consumer marketing (national television, retail, and out-of-home advertising, including annual Super Bowl advertising since 2015 — the first fresh-produce category ever to appear on that broadcast), retailer partnership programmes, foodservice trade development, and category insight research on behalf of the growers and importers who fund it. It does not itself grow, pack, ship, import, or distribute fruit; those functions remain inside the member firms of APEAM and MHAIA. It does coordinate the USDA-supervised import protocols and the certification systems that keep the fruit moving across the border on standard health and traceability terms.

The consumer awareness of Mexican Hass avocados in the American market has moved in a decade from a category most shoppers recognised only vaguely to one they name by country of origin — a rare piece of American branding work for a commodity fresh produce category. More than eight in ten avocados sold in the United States now come from the APEAM-MHAIA network. Avocados From Mexico is the marketing engine behind that shift.