Blue Diamond to add Salida almond warehouse capacity

Blue Diamond Growers is boosting the warehouse capacity at its main almond receiving plant by 33%, another sign of the industry’s rapid growth.

The expansion will add just eight to 10 jobs at the site, which employs 370 people year-round and an additional 30 during harvest. But it will reduce wait times for truckers bringing in the crop from around the Central Valley, said Alicia Rockwell, director of corporate communications for the Sacramento-based company.

“It’s very congested in the harvest period, and this will allow us to speed up the process,” she said.

Blue Diamond did not disclose the cost of the expansion, which will make the world’s largest almond receiving site even larger. It is expected to be ready for the August start of the 2015 harvest.

Blue Diamond, a grower-owned cooperative founded in 1910, is the world’s biggest almond producer. The Salida plant, which dates to 1968, does basic sorting and cleaning of nuts bound for further processing at a Turlock plant that opened in 2013 and the plant next to the Sacramento headquarters.

The expansion totals about 58,000 square feet and will store up to 60 million pounds of almonds. It will provide for “gentle handling” of the crop as well as enhance food safety and flexibility for growers and buyers, said Darrell Nelson, manager of the Salida plant.

The company says features will include:

Blue Diamond is by far the largest processor of California almonds, which account for about 80% of the world supply. It reported about $1.5 billion in sales in the 2013-14 fiscal year, up $300 million from the previous year. The company projects 20% growth in the coming years.

“We have to have a place to put all these almonds that are coming to us,” Nelson said.

Almonds became the top-grossing farm product in Fresno County in 2013, the most recent year for crop reports. Ten years ago, almonds were the eighth-ranked crop in the county. Now the nut is solidly in the top position with a gross value of $1.1 billion, surpassing grapes at $1 billion. Almonds were grown on 162,220 acres in 2013, up 5.4% from the previous year.