Blue Diamond Growers
| Type | Agricultural marketing cooperative |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1910 |
| Headquarters | Sacramento, California, United States |
| Products | almonds |
| Website | www.bluediamond.com |
Blue Diamond Growers is a Californian agricultural cooperative and marketing organization that specializes in almonds. Founded in 1910 as the California Almond Grower’s Exchange, the organization claims to be the world's largest "tree nut processing and marketing company". It serves 3500 almond growers, and helps make the almond crop (valued at over $1 billion) California's largest food export.
The company produces almonds in various forms, including roasted almonds (under the "Blue Diamond") brand and almond milk (under the "Almond Breeze" brand).
The cooperative is privately held and does not disclose sales figures, although the Sacramento Bee has estimated it to have annual sales of about $709 million in 2009.[1]
The organization is headquartered in Sacramento, California. From 2004 to 2008 it resisted attempts by the International Longshore and Warehouse Union to organize workers at its processing plant, and according to the AFL-CIO has been found by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to have violated a number of labor laws in its campaign against the union.[2][3] In November 2008, however, the union lost an NLRB-supervised vote to establish a branch.[4]
See also
- Diamond of California — an unrelated walnut growing company (and former cooperative).
External links
References
- ↑ Plait, Phil. "What a California almond company can teach us about the globalization of American agriculture. - Slate Magazine". Slate.com. Retrieved April 8, 2013.
- ↑ Lamb, Celia. Blue Diamond Growers won't appeal NLRB decision. Sacramento Business Journal. 18 April 2006.
- ↑ AFL-CIO Now Blog article, September 14, 2006
- ↑ Account of the vote on the ILWU website