The Importance of Food Safety: Blue Diamond^® knows the importance of protecting our brand; thus we understand the importance of protecting our customer’s product. Blue Diamond’s member/growers entrust us to take the crop they’ve grown and process it in the most careful and conscientious manner, ensuring that the food products we produce exceed all standards for excellence.

Blue Diamond Growers…

• Has the industry’s largest and most advanced chemistry and microbiological testing labs
• Employs over 60 full-time quality assurance employees, including two chemists and two microbiologists
• Adheres to industry-leading to HAACP guidelines and FDA regulations
• Technicians and scientists process more than 40,000 product tests each year
• Has a USDA-accredited laboratory for Aflatoxin Testing
• Completes all processing in peanut-free facilities
• Is the first value-added almond ingredient handler to attain Level 2 SQF 2000 Certification, demonstrating our ability to provide proof of a rigorous food safety management system to worldwide buyers

Our member/growers employ the latest methods to produce their crop in the most efficient manner. Blue Diamond Growers supports our grower’s efforts in these endeavors and the development of Good Agricultural Practices, GAP’s, for use in growing their crops. The links below will guide you to the latest documents needed to develop a complete GAP program.

The GAP Manual

GAP Self Audit

GAP Quick Start Guide

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State of the Art Facilities

Sacramento

The Blue Diamond Cooperative has called Sacramento home for over 100 years, on nearly 90 acres majestically located along the American River next to downtown Sacramento.

Blue Diamond continues to invest in state of the art technologies designed to enforce our strict quality and food safety standards. In concert with our Best Manufacturing Practices, these technologies allow us to consistently meet and exceed our global customer’s ever-increasing requirements.

Today, Sacramento operations include over one million square feet of processing and storage under one roof—a cold storage and distribution center, bulk meat storage, an in-shell production facility; the cooperative offices of business management, global marketing and sales; and the industry’s most advanced almond innovation center.

Salida

Blue Diamond’s Salida Plant is the World’s Largest Almond Receiving Station. Current capacity enables Salida to receive in excess of five million pounds per day; safely storing approximately 132 million pounds under cover and 60 million pounds of finished product in cold storage. Crop drying facilities are capable of drying approximately 1.5 million pounds within a 24 hour period.

Salida is home to the most technologically advanced brown almond processing line in the world, capable of processing up to 1.2 million pounds every 24 hours.

Blue Diamond continues to focus on core initiatives that will support our growers’ increasing production well into the future. Initiatives include energy and emission reductions, expansion of the use of innovative technologies to remove foreign material and insect damage, along with continuous employee and food safety upgrades.

Turlock

Blue Diamond Growers strives to ensure that the almonds we produce meet the highest standards for food safety. Our new facility in Turlock, California was named “Plant of the Year” for 2014 by Food Engineering Magazine and sets the highest standard for processing almonds in the world’s most modern facility. The plant is equipped with the latest almond technology designed to process new value-added products with quality and food safety as the driving force for efficiency.

Almond Innovation Center

Innovation is responsible for our enduring success and accelerating growth. Every major innovation in almonds has come from Blue Diamond: bold flavors, milk, crackers and exciting new ingredient products used by food producers around the world.

Located at the Sacramento facility, Blue Diamond’s Almond Innovation Center, a 6,500 square-foot facility dedicated to the cooperative’s almond research and development activities, was christened and officially opened its doors in March 2013. This state-of-the-art laboratory will allow the R&D team to showcase their almond expertise, leading to a potential five-fold increase in new almond product sales growth in the coming years.