When to install machinery in a fruit packing house: a calendar by crop

Mexico shipped 136,000 metric tons of avocado in four weeks between January and February, according to USDA (March 2026 report). Nobody wants a technician with the hopper open during those weeks. To know when to install machinery in a fruit packing house, you have to read the curve of your crop month by month and count backward: when it gets tested, when it gets signed and when it gets decided.

The curves in this text come from public harvest calendars. When each packing house decides does not come from a purchasing study, because Mexico has no public one. It holds equally for a fruit crate tipper and for an automated fruit packing line.

When to install machinery in a fruit packing house, by crop?

The columns come from USDA, with charts from SIAP, Mexico’s agrifood statistics service (March and June 2026), and from the DOF, Mexico’s official federal gazette, for apple (January 7, 2026). The machine goes in during the lightest months; when to decide comes from counting back from there. Your scale records outweigh this table: if your peak falls in another month, shift the calendar.

Which months are low, if avocado has no dead month?

June and July are the two low months in a row. USDA explains that the four blooms in Michoacán overlap and ensure continuous fruit (March 2026). The SIAP chart for 2025, read by eye, looks like this:

April is tempting, and it leaves 30 days between two heavy months. June and July give two months, with August still below the peaks. Even so, 180 divided by 275 gives 65%: the lowest month brings about two-thirds of the highest.

In avocado, the installation gets planned without stopping the whole plant. If you have two lines, the work goes on one while the other runs. With a single line, ask for the exact days of downtime and what can be left ready without touching it, such as bases, guards and control panel. Leave the final cutover for the low stretch, with the crew ready to go back to manual work.

What about tomato and apple?

Tomato. The national chart for 2025 shows October and November on top, near 350 and 320 thousand metric tons, and April to June at the bottom, between 165 and 195 thousand (chart reading, USDA, June 2026). USDA notes that summer production starts in July, and San Luis Potosí contributed 312,597 metric tons in 2025, 11% of the national total. That curve is national; if your greenhouse runs a different cycle, use your own. Sinaloa runs on a shifted calendar: its vegetable season started on September 1 in 2025 (Tus Buenas Noticias, September 25, 2025), so its low months fall in another part of the year.

Apple. A resolution published in the DOF on January 7, 2026 places the harvest from early August to early November, and Agricultura, Mexico’s agriculture ministry, gave September 20, 2026 as the close in most regions (via Portal Frutícola). After harvest, packing goes on: the fruit comes out of cold storage to be washed, waxed and packed, according to the same resolution. That is why the installation aims for the stretch before August. If you dump bins, confirm the machine for your bin first: at Agro Robotics that equipment is still to be confirmed.

Mango. EMEX, Mexico’s association of mango export packers, gives a season from January to September, with eight producing states (accessed November 4, 2026), and each regional packing house sees only part of it. At one shift with a short season payback stretches out; review the mango packing process first.

How do you count backward from the season start?

There is no public study of how long a packing house committee takes in Mexico. This is the sequence, read from the end to the beginning:

The step that is easy to forget is the test with your fruit, because it needs fruit in season. Ask any supplier of a robotic case packer for fruit for it. In avocado that works out in almost any month; in apple it depends on cold storage; in tomato, on the season being under way. If the test with fruit is left for the end, the low months are gone before you decide.

Bring the numbers of the line too, because the supplier will ask you for them: crates at the infeed, boxes per table and box weight. You get them with the boxes per minute calculator, and the explanation is in how many boxes per minute a packing line needs.

Which dates are already set for 2027?

Dates checked on November 4, 2026. Your accountant validates the deduction. If your squeeze is people for the coming peak, look first at the options in labor shortage in fruit packing houses, because a machine decided today goes in only in your crop’s next low months.

What should you get in writing about dates?

Three dates in the quote: when the machine enters your packing floor, how many days the line stays stopped and when the test with fruit is considered finished. Agro confirms them in the quote, the same as the lead time, and you can review what happens if something fails in in-season support. If any date falls inside your peak, move the signing earlier.