American Dream® is a program created by Washington-based CMI Orchards, and was introduced in 2018. The patriotic program started with apples packed in branded cartons and in 2019 the company expanded the program to include cherries. The American Dream® label was created to show support of military families, veterans, and patriots of America. CMI’s American Dream® program became a success in domestic US market and has started to perform well in Asia.

In 2019 CMI Orchards decided to first exhibit at the Asia Fruit Logistica show, which was held September 4-6 in Hong Kong. The company has participated in this exhibition for many years, but only as visitors. Scott Agnew, Export Sales Manager for CMI commented: “We want to reinforce our relationships with existing customers and to show our presence this year. We are exhibiting the new American Dream® label that we started to ship to Asia this year and it was a success”.

The team shares that this season they want to increase shipments to Asia and are ready to work with all countries. Scott added: “We have plenty of apples and the condition looks to be outstanding: color and flavor is really good.”

George Harter, Vice President of Marketing at CMI added that the company started harvesting apples and pears in August and will finish around the second week of November. The company keeps crops in cold storage with controlled atmosphere, this allows year round availability.

CMI offers exclusive brands such as Ambrosia Gold®, KIKU®, Kanzi®, Sweet Gourmet Pears®, Skylar Rae Cherries® and organics in the Daisy Girl Organics® label. CMI grows and ships Envy®, Jazz® and Pacific Rose® apples. Also the company works with oranges, mandarins and tangerines, lemons, grapefruits and grapes.

“A lot of our proprietary brands and varieties come from all parts of the world. We are very involved in global research and development of new varieties and spending enormous amount of our time and funding to take a look of what will be going on in 10-20 years from now,” continued Harter.

CMI Orchards will be exhibiting at PMA Fresh Summit (Anaheim, CA, USA October 18-19), Booth # 1490.