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Courtesy Pacific International MarketingFrom left to right, owners of Central City Cooling Tom Russell, president of Pacific International Marketing; Jim Rice, owner of OSR Enterprises; and Dave Johnson, vice president of Pacific International Marketing, attend the new facility's grand opening June 10 in Santa Maria, Calif. Central City Cooling has opened a new 70,000-square-foot site in Santa Maria, Calif., the first of several expansion projects planned by owners Pacific International Marketing and OSR Enterprises.
Construction of two more facilities of equal size is expected within three years, which would push the total to 210,000 square feet, said Tom Russell, president of Pacific International Marketing.
Moreover, Pure Pacific Organics LLC — owned by Pacific International Marketing — already is implementing plans to double capacity on its 30,000 square-foot processing plant that opened May 1 in Gonzales, Calif.
“We’ve just signed a contract because it’s overflowing,” Russell said of the Gonzales site. “We realized within days we were plugged to the gunnels. We’re going to try to work weekends and double its size over the course of the summer.”
The former Central City Cooling site, now vacated, held about 45,000 produce packages. Capacity at the new site, which opened June 10 on a 40-acre property adjoining OSR’s ranch, is 110,000 packages, Russell said.
Rising demand and outmoded equipment at the old site prompted the construction. Much of the demand is coming from berry grower-shipper Driscoll’s.
“They’re growing their business in Santa Maria,” Russell said. “We probably will do 750,000 cartons of strawberries for Driscoll’s. If they choose to give us more product to cool, we’ll need to start on our next expansion soon.”
Volume on vegetables will be close to 7 million packages, he said. Central City Cooling handles a variety of commodities, including lettuce, broccoli, cauliflower and spinach.
For strawberries, the new site uses a MACS Cooler, an alternative to forced-air cooling. Eight pallets at a time pass through three chambers, cooling the fruit to 50, 45 and 34 degrees, respectively. It cools up to 3,000 cartons in an hour, Russell said.
Other systems in use at the site include cooling tunnels, new icing machines for broccoli and vacuum cooling for leaf lettuces.
There are 12 truck bays.
CORRECTED: Dave Johnson's title was misstated in the original photo caption.
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Comments (2)
Leave a commentAnthony Weiner
Report AbuseAre you doing any hiring?
Michael
Report AbuseI don't think so, pal!