Names of Note: Blue Diamond expands again in Salida, and helps a children’s hospital
Blue Diamond Growers has expanded its Salida plant again, making the world’s biggest almond processor even bigger.
The addition includes dry-roasting and almond-flour manufacturing, the first time the plant has gone beyond basic processing of the crop, Communications Manager Samantha DeMelo said.
The new space covers about 52,000 square feet at the north end of the Sisk Road plant. It now totals about 900,000 square feet of space devoted to receiving, processing, cold storage and other functions.
The expansion also brings the latest in pasteurization technology and energy-saving lighting, heating and cooling.
Blue Diamond is a farmer-owned cooperative founded in 1910. It employs about 900 people at its Sacramento headquarters, where most of the snack nuts and other value-added products are made.
Another 600 or so work at the Salida plant, which opened in 1968 and mainly ships plain almonds to other food companies. It has expanded several times and has new warehousing under construction.
And about 160 people are at the Turlock plant, which dates to 2013. It slices, dices and blanches nuts and produces almond flour. It will make the base for almond milk in an addition to be finished in 2020.
Blue Diamond held a Salida ribbon-cutting Tuesday. It used the occasion to present a $25,000 donation to Valley Children’s Healthcare for its Pelandale Specialty Care Center. It opened in February about a mile to the southeast.
Valley Children’s, based near Fresno, serves about 12,000 patients a year at the north Modesto center. It has specialists in pediatric cardiology, endocrinology, gastroenterology and several other fields.
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