Blue Diamond Growers started in 1910 as a processing and marketing co-op for California almond growers. Today, there are six thousand almond farmers in California. Thirty five hundred of those farmers bring their product to the ninety-six-acre Blue Diamond processing facility. In peak season, twelve hundred workers run the lines for sixteen hours a day. The California almond crop has a value of over $1 billion annually. It is the largest food export from California.
When the farmer delivers bulk almonds by the truckload, a sample is taken and examined. Payment to the grower will depend on its quality. The nuts travel from silos to the top floor of a five-story building, where the cleaning, grading, and sorting operation begins.
The state-of-the-art plant in Sacramento uses top-of-the-line equipment to find only the best almonds. Using lasers or infrared detectors, the process knocks out almonds that seem too dark or light. Sand, shell fragments, and damaged nuts are removed and excluded from customer sales. Every almond goes through an inspection by eyes that might catch something the process might miss.
The Blue Diamond system produces exactly the type of almond the customer wants: raw, blanched, chopped, sliced, seasoned, diced, large or small almonds. There is enough cold storage for millions of pounds to keep the product fresh before satisfying orders. Indeed, the Blue Diamond Company is the most extensive operation in the world for processing nuts.
Sam Cunningham is the director of the Almond Research Center, with offices at the Blue Diamond headquarters. Nutrition and health are always on his mind. Instantly, he can give you chapters and verses on the chemistry of almonds. He speaks of cyanide, glucose, amygdaline, prunasin, mamdelonitrite, and most important of all, benzaldehyde, the key to the basic almond taste.
Sam can tell you how almonds fight diabetes, allergies, cancer, heart disease, and high blood pressure. The health food industry is an ideal place to go with products like almond paste, almond butter, and almond milk for lactose intolerant. These nut kinds of milk are known to be so incredibly nutritious that they’ve historically been used as a substitute for mother’s milk when nursing and for cows’ milk in cooking. In Sam’s opinion, it’s “Tastier than soy milk.” Furthermore, his son devised a slogan and put it on a big sign in the office that said, “Hey. Leave those cows alone!”
