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Current Market
Report FDA Approves Qualified Health
Claim 7/16/03 Billion Pound Crop
Estimate 7/1/03 New Processing Facility 9/13/02
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BALLICO, Calif. – September 13, 2002 – With something like a billion pounds of almonds being harvested this year in California, one might not think it unusual that Hilltop Ranch, Inc. of Ballico will open this month the newest and perhaps the most efficient almond processing facility in the industry. Although Hilltop Ranch is an experienced almond processor with a 20-year history, this family-owned corporation managed by owners Dave and Christine Long, has recently had to face the consequence of its own success: either respond to the demand from growers and industry for more capacity, or risk falling behind in the competition – regardless of the bumper crop. With the decision to grow both its plant facility and its markets, Hilltop Ranch has jumped ahead in a big way. Its new 48,000 sf processing facility on Turlock Road will provide capacity to clean, size, and grade 30-million pounds of almonds this season, with capacity for more volume in the big almond seasons ahead. By using automation to reduce foreign material, reduce chipping and scratching of almonds, and detect quality problems – Hilltop Ranch expects to please both its growers and its confectionery end-users with better returns and lower costs. Advanced technology to remove foreign material is a key quality process in the new plant, addressing product liability ‘hot-buttons’ like contamination by foreign materials such as wood, glass, or stones that might otherwise make their way into food products – or even from cross-contamination by edible materials that may have potential as allergens. A huge gravity separator from Forsberg and electronic sorting from Satake are the solution to foreign material removal. Using Forsberg’s TK-V2000 gravity separator with oversized and redundant capacity and three Satake 40-channel color sorting machines assures the industry’s cleanest product. The Satake color scanners can also detect kernels with unacceptable chipping, or discoloration that will likely disqualify a nut from making the grade. Multiple inspections by these carefully tuned electronic sorters are a key to quality and cost management, reducing further the high cost of hand labor involved in almond grading. Sizing decks by LMC are engineered ‘over spec’ to assure maximum uniformity in classifying almonds according to kernel size. In fact, they are the largest sizing decks ever built by LMC, designed to process more than 20,000-lbs. of almonds per hour, and are mounted on steel infrastructure built by Hilltop engineers. Hilltop Ranch won’t need to slow its production line like some processors to meet product specs, because the equipment is engineered to exceed process requirements. Hand-sorting and visual inspection is still a central part of the almond grading process. Hilltop’s new sorting room in the original plant features eight stainless steel, triple drop tables with moving belts in a sanitary environment, followed by magnetometers that scan the product to detect metallic foreign material. In some plants, this might be largely the end of the process, but a key component in the Hilltop quality and cost control system, is their investment in the most advanced packaging system in the almond industry. Cartons are assembled, filled, and weighed automatically, then sealed, labeled, and even palletized by machine, in an amazing process that seems to have been designed by a Disney animator, but which has actually been created by Hilltop’s technical team and suppliers Klippenstein Corporation, Weighpack Systems, Inc., and MAF Industries. The packaging system is designed to pack 8 cartons a minute, or 24,000-lbs. per hour. This investment in automation and cost efficiency comes as the almond industry struggles to fill orders from a record-breaking crop that has generated huge tonnage, with troublesome high percentages of very small kernels, and too few large kernels to satisfy demand. Nevertheless, Hilltop Ranch, like other packers in the industry, is confident that end-users and quality processors will find solutions that will keep the almonds flowing into the candy bars, cereals, and confections that consumers crave. "We have been really pleased at the strength of new orders, and believe the California almond industry will again stun the skeptics by proving that no almond crop is too big for this marketplace," says Dave Long, president of Hilltop Ranch, Inc. With heavy sales to Japan, Korea, Europe, and North America this season, Hilltop Ranch is eager to put its new plant and technology to work. "We have agent offices in Tokyo and Seoul, as well as brokers who represent us in Europe and the domestic market. We believe that with constant effort to understand customer requirements, and a focus on constant improvement in the production process, we can be a leader in our industry and provide for the needs of our growers," says Long. One of the ways in which Long sees Hilltop Ranch improving product quality, is through an emphasis on product safety. Through a proprietary process, Hilltop Ranch expects to soon offer its customers the extra safety of almond "pasteurization", reducing or eliminating the potential for hazards like salmonella and ecoli. Fabrication of the pasteurization system and environmental dust control systems was by both the Hilltop engineering team and Wilky Sheet Metal. "Increasingly, the almond industry is under more demanding scrutiny by end-users, who are looking for more assurance against product liability issues. Food safety is really a big priority for us, as well as our industry, and we intend to keep Hilltop Ranch among the top tier of suppliers who can address these demands with confidence," says Long. Hilltop Ranch will hold an open house for the new production facility on September 28th. For details and directions, call (209) 874-1875. Dave Long is an elected director of the Almond Board of California, and currently serves as chairman of both the Reserve Committee and the Administration and Finance Committee. He is past chairman of the Quality Control Committee.
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