Mission Produce Is Buying Calavo: What a Grower Who Sold to Both Is Watching
In January 2026, Mission Produce announced it was buying Calavo Growers. For anyone in California avocados, that was a day we never thought would come. Calavo has been part of this industry for about 102 years, and our own family’s fruit went through it for a long time.
Kirk recorded this the afternoon the news broke. Here is what the deal is, why it matters to a family grove like ours, and the question nobody could answer yet.
Who is Calavo, and who is Mission?
Calavo started as a grower co-op, formed to support and market California avocados everywhere. It was organized in August 1923 as the California Avocado Growers’ Exchange and took the name Calavo Growers of California in 1927. Families like Kirk’s were members. In the 2000s the members voted to go public, and Calavo became a publicly traded company rather than a co-op. We told the longer story in the rise and fall of the avocado co-op.
Mission Produce is much younger. It started in the 1980s as a grower and packer and expanded very fast. Now it is acquiring Calavo in a cash-and-stock deal that was expected to be completed by around August 2026.
Why we already switched from Calavo to Mission
We used to sell our fruit to Calavo. For the last few years we have sold to Mission instead, for a plain reason: better prices. Kirk also thinks Mission has the stronger balance sheet of the two, which matters when you are trusting a company with a season’s worth of fruit.
A disclosure, since Kirk’s background is in finance and he cannot help himself: he owns a small amount of stock in both companies, and he looked at both tickers the day of the announcement. Over the previous five years, both were down about 20%. On announcement day, Mission’s share price fell and Calavo’s rose roughly 13%. None of that is investment advice; it is just the kind of thing a finance nerd who farms looks at.
What does it mean for consumers and growers?
That was the biggest question Kirk had, and when it was asked on the investor call that afternoon, the companies did not have an answer yet.
His own guess is that shoppers will barely notice. Growers are a different story. Prices paid to growers are where consolidation is felt, and California farmers already receive a small slice of what an avocado sells for — we explained that in farm gate pricing explained.
Four packing houses in Mexico
The detail that stood out most: after the deal, Mission will have four packing houses in Mexico. That suggests the combined company will keep leaning into imports rather than California-grown fruit. For a small California grove, a bigger buyer focused on imports is something to keep a close eye on. We have written about how imported avocados shape the price on the shelf, and about the wider picture in our guide to what it costs to run a California avocado farm.
What we are doing about it
We cannot change what the big packers do. What we can do is sell more of our fruit directly, so fewer of our avocados depend on decisions made in a boardroom. If you have thoughts or questions about the acquisition, we would genuinely like to hear them in the comments on the video.
Our 4lb Hass box and 6lb Hass box go straight from our trees to your door, picked the week they ship and shipped free — and between harvests, the waitlist on either page will tell you when fruit is back. Until the trees are picking again, the avocado scoop, the Hawaiian shirt and our hats ship year-round.
