MIAMI, FL - Back in June we got in touch with Albert Perez, CEO and Grower Relations leader at Continental Fresh, about the company’s new labels, Food For Humanity and Water for All, which were created with the purpose of giving back. The eye-catching labels for Continental’s vegetables and fresh mangos respectively helped fund clean water projects in Latin America, which is a cause especially close to Albert’s heart. Now, as the Mexican mango season comes to a close, I sat down with him to discuss the results of the fundraisers.

“We concluded the vegetable season from Honduras earlier in the year, and our Mexican mango program began in late February and will conclude in about a week. We had projected to do one-and-a-half million boxes of mangos, and we exceeded two million. With this label making its debut in the market, we became one of the top importers of Mexican mangos,” Albert told me.

On September 2, Continental Fresh made a donation of $26,467 to BLUE Missions, which is the organization that builds these influential water projects. Albert expressed that the team’s expectations were exceeded as one penny a box seemed small at first, but quickly evolved into a massive donation.

“It was remarkable to see how much of an impact the label had on some of our customers and in the market as a whole. We received a lot of feedback about people who really liked the concept of our label giving back,” Albert explained. “Customers engaged with the water drop PLU sticker we put on our mangos and wrote to us about how they love our brand proposition.”

Not only did these fundraises strike a chord with consumers, but the projects also hit close to home for Albert, who has spent a large portion of his life fighting for water equality in the Dominican Republic.

“I personally have been working on water projects in Latin America for the last 36 years. It's something that I began back in high school, and I started my own organization called LIFO Missions, which eventually led to one of my young participants starting BLUE Missions,” Albert said. “Whereas LIFO was doing one project per year, BLUE Missions is now doing as much as 30 projects per year of water and sanitation. These fundraisers are one way we’ve been able to take our passion for produce and make it generate some donations for the work that we love to do in BLUE.”

Anyone interested in learning more about the Food For Humanity and Water for All projects or BLUE Mission’s other initiatives can visit www.bluemissions.org/c-f. For more of the latest news in fresh produce, keep checking in with us at AndNowUKnow.

Continental Fresh