Blue Diamond completes expansions in Turlock and Salida. Let the almond milk flow
Blue Diamond Growers has finished an expansion of its Turlock plant, adding production of almond milk. And it is about done with a big new warehouse in Salida.
The projects add a modest number of jobs, which the company declined to specify. It did say the total workforce is now about 230 in Turlock, 500 in Salida and 1,000 at the Sacramento headquarters.
Blue Diamond made the announcement Wednesday, the 110th anniversary of its founding as a farmer-owned cooperative. It has become the largest player in the global almond industry.
Salida warehouse
The Salida plant opened on Sisk Road in 1969 and has long been the highest-volume almond receiving station in the world. The new warehouse, expected to be ready by the end of May, will increase the storage capacity by about 50 million pounds, or 20 percent. It will get its first use during the August-to-October harvest.
The new building has about 58,000 square feet of storage and a 65-foot-tall “gravity fed spiral conveyance system,” a news release said. That will make deliveries more efficient for growers and reduce damage to the crop.
Salida mainly does just basic sizing and inspection of almonds bound for processing elsewhere by Blue Diamond or other food companies. The plant last year added one line for dry-roasting of nuts and another for grinding into almond flour.
Almond Breeze from Turlock
The Turlock plant opened in 2013 on Washington Road. It takes in plain almonds from Salida and Sacramento for slicing, dicing, blanching and grinding into flour.
The expansion added about 52,000 square feet to the 200,000 already there. Part of the new space will be used for making the butter-like base for the Almond Breeze milk. Water is added at other locations around the world to reduce shipping costs.
The almond milk base also is made at the Sacramento plant. It produces snack nuts under the Blue Diamond retail label, along with Nut-Thins crackers.
Part of the Turlock annex will have a use that Blue Diamond has yet to disclose.
Help for food banks
Blue Diamond also announced its part in a major donation to three food banks helping people during the coronavirus. The company joined with Union Pacific Railroad and Sun-Maid Growers of California, a raisin processor near Fresno, in offering to match up to $50,000 in contributions.
The recipients are Second Harvest Food Bank of San Joaquin & Stanislaus Counties, Sacramento Food Bank & Family Services, and Central California Food Bank, serving Madera to Kern counties.
The Blue Diamond expansions happen as almond acreage continues to increase in California, which already grows about 80 percent of the global crop.
The state has about 1.26 million acres of bearing almond trees, up from 1.18 million in 2019, the U.S. Department of Agriculture estimated last month. The first projection of the 2020 crop, which accounts for weather and other factors, will be released Tuesday, May 12.
This story was originally published May 11, 2020 at 5:00 AM.
