U.S. grower To-Jo Fresh Mushrooms has announced an expansion of its production and storage capabilities, in a bid to better position itself for the incremental 3% annual demand growth the industry is currently enjoying. 

The Pennsylvania-based company recently secured an additional 200,000-square-feet of white and brown mushroom growing capacity, enabling it to harvest an extra 8 million pounds of product annually.

To-Jo has also expanded its headquarters, with a new mushroom receiving area, additional cold storage capacity, and a new pre-cleaned mushroom processing area.

The company's marketing director Peter Wilder told www.freshfruitportal.com over recent years demand had been exceeding supply, which had only been increasing at around 2% per year.

"We need increased supply - demand is increasing and our customer base is growing, so we bought these new farms to make sure that we're positioned properly for growth," he said.

Wilder said the demand growth could partly be attributed to the Mushroom Council's recent emphasis on blendability - a concept whereby a certain proportion of processed meat products for foodservice is swapped for mushrooms.

"If you're making a meatball, or a burger or a taco and you're using ground meat or ground turkey, you can substitute say 25% or 50% of that meat block for mushrooms and have flavorful, healthier dishes for the familiar staples in your diet," he said.

"We're starting to see major restaurant chains like Macaroni Grill, Seasons 52, and The Cheesecake Factory introducing blending to their burgers.

"We're also seeing an uptake in some of our processing grade product for food service because of it, and we hope that it translates into retail in the next year."

To-Jo sells around 65% of its production for retail, with the remainder going for food service. The majority is sold to the domestic market, with some processed sales in Canada and the U.K.

Wilder said although he had noticed a trend towards the company's specialty mushroom varieties like oyster and shiitake, production was not being increased for these just yet as there was still 'ample supply'.

He added brown mushrooms were currently experiencing slightly faster demand growth than the white varieties.

The To-Jo representative said while he was expecting demand to grow steadily in the future, there would be various challenges the industry would need to address.

"We're facing the same challenges as other industries like higher production costs, higher raw material prices, increasing prices of energy and labor wages, and insurance pressures," he said.

"So as the price to produce the product goes up, and demand steadily increases with supply remaining sort of steady, we might start to see some upward pressure on prices."

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www.freshfruitportal.com