Do we like Del Monte Corporation (formerly Fresh Del Monte Produce)?
Grows and sells fresh fruit and veg, and since March 2026 Del Monte canned and packaged foods; based in Coral Gables, Florida.
Our score: 4 out of 10. Mixed, leaning cautious. We'd want better proof on pesticide use and worker conditions on its farms before backing it. The record we found is mostly old lawsuits and outside reports.
Mohammad Abu-Ghazaleh bought the struggling fresh-fruit business in 1996, and it listed on the NYSE a year later. He's still chairman and CEO. By his own account, he turned it from a business with very few products into one with over 100 product lines.
The big 2026 news is that the produce company bought most of bankrupt Del Monte Foods' vegetable, tomato and refrigerated fruit assets for $285m. A US bankruptcy court approved the sale, and it closed in March. That put the Del Monte brand under one owner for the first time in nearly four decades. In June the company renamed itself Del Monte Corporation.
The less cosy side is the farms. Hundreds of banana workers sued several fruit and chemical firms, Del Monte Fresh Produce among them, over the pesticide DBCP, which they blame for sterility and other illnesses. A US appeals court revived their claims. These are accusations, and the lawsuit report we found is undated.
Newer reporting is also uncomfortable. VICE wrote about brutal conditions and pesticide worries on Costa Rican pineapple farms. It said Del Monte accounts for over half of the country's pineapple exports. Del Monte told VICE its pesticides meet US and EU rules. Public Eye reported that a strike organiser at a Del Monte subsidiary in Guatemala was shot dead in 2023.
So we land at a 4. It's a huge, steady food business, and the Del Monte deal gives it more reach. But serious farm-labour and pesticide questions follow it, and it needs to show it has fixed them.