Visalia’s Top 10 industries in 1993 are mostly gone today – some 30 years later
-January 4,2022-
Visalia’s Top 10 industries back in 1993 are mostly out of business or have shrunk considerably job wise some 30 years after the City of Visalia published a profile report Discover Visalia that year.
Even as more companies have landed here and expanded in an unprecedented boom in the past few years, the players, types of industries and significantly, the scale has changed big time.
Back in 1993 the top industry on the published list was Jostens American Yearbook, a commercial printing plant with a long history in the community but that is long gone in 2023.The company had seasonal employment as high as 700.
The work at Jostens was geared to get ready and print school yearbooks each winter. The plant was welcome back in the 60s when it was hard in an ag region to find full time jobs or any job in winter months, just when the company needed additional workers.
Today the big building houses an Italian produce packaging company – Sorma.
Number 2 on the list in 1993 was USDA Cotton classing facility for the Valley crop in the industrial park that employed as many as 350, again on a seasonal basis. Today the government facility carries on its work but it employs just 50 in the 3-month busy time and 8 on a permanent basis. Technology is one reason and the loss of cotton acreage in the West is another. Director Greg Townsend says the Visalia facility now covers 4 states with perhaps a quarter of the cotton gins it handled 30 years ago as the industry has shrunk.
Who was number 3 on the list? Eagle Snacks employed 338 workers, says the city report. Owner Anhueser Busch sold the plant to rival snack company Frito Lay in 1996.They opened a new potato chip plant here in 1997 but it closed in 2004 with the chip business transferred to Bakersfield. The site and buildings were bought by dairy co-op California Dairies Inc who remodeled and plumbed it to build a huge butter and powder milk plant in 2008. Visalia is the company’s corporate headquarters supporting the largest single evaporator-dryer in North America. The plant is in the middle of the biggest milk producing county in the US .California Dairies employs 500.
Vlasic Foods had a pickle plant in Visalia that employed 314 – number 4 in employment on the list.The plant owned by Campbell Soup closed in 1992.
Number 5 on the industry list is Sierra Pacific Apparel that employed 300 busy clothing makers in Visalia. It was a company that was started by Ernie Aquafresca who had worked at Bayly’s Manufacturing before it closed in 1988. Sierra Pacific closed in 1999.
Number six was Knudsen Dairy Products that ended up going bankrupt and is no longer.The company employed 200 in Visalia and was known as the largest cottage cheese plant in the US. Knudsen was bought out by Kraft but Kraft closed the Goshen Ave plant in 2006. Today it is still a milk plant owned by Milk Specialties Global operating since 2012 and owned by them since 2019.The big facility employs only a handful of workers.
California Pretzel was on the top 10 list too but the pretzel business is now long gone in Visalia. Also on the 1993 list was Taycal Press that employed 160 but has closed their doors as well. Another print company going dark.
Still on the 30 year old industry list but operating today is Kawneer, the door manufacturing plant. Moore’s Business Forms who employed 190 back then is now RL Donnelley and is still printing business forms and stickers but with a staff listed as 13. Visalia was once a printing industry hub but technology put an end to that.
So Visalia’s industrial profile suggests maybe a 95% turnover in companies but the 500-acre district is busier than ever – now filled with small and large firms, warehouses and distribution companies including the biggest – Amazon ( 1500 employees) with over 2.3 million sf here and the huge UPS hub. VF Corp employs about 1000 in Visalia. And there is plenty more to come suggests the Visalia Economic Development Corp who states that there is 14 million sq feet of industrial space in the works in the city. The new 400-job,1 million sf Ace Hardware service center is about ready to open. This month another 1.2 mil sf spec warehouse is breaking ground a mile north of Riggin and west of Plaza. The new facility is expected to open in October 2023 at a cost of $70 million. The same developer built two Amazon plants here already. The leap north is a portend of how the industrial park will grow in the future with plenty of land to accommodate it.
Besides these big operations, the industrial park has grown its “mom and pop” side as well south of Goshen Ave where developer Butch Oldfield and others have parceled out 2,5 and 20 acre lots in the American industrial blocks.Companies like American Ceramic Tile are expanding here. American Inc now manufactures and custom fabricates as well, they employed 425 in Dec 2020.
Ag-related companies like Perfection Pet Food,Peninsula Packaging, MWI(205 employees), Hydrite and Edeniq –expanding this year- carry on.
In part due to the regional UPS package hub here, industrial park companies now ship to 95 million customers overnight. So no – this is not your dad’s industrial park.
Visalia Economic Development manager Devon Jones emphasizes growth in the manufacturing sector.
“The Visalia industrial park continues to grow while adapting to the demands of the global economy. While manufacturing is changing due to technology and global competitiveness, Visalia still offers a strategic location for any company wishing to be close to the ag/food sector or to service the CA or Western US market. Currently we are seeing most of the growth in e-commerce and distribution, but manufacturing still has a strong presence in the Visalia industrial park and there are a lot of groups working on growing the sector and a quality workforce to handle the jobs of tomorrow.”
Other major employers today in the industrial park:
Graphic Packaging (Int’l Paper) employed 757 based on Dec 2020 data
Voltage Multipliers employed 220 in Dec 2020
Bluescope Buildings employed 185 in Dec 2020
Milgard Window and Doors employed 162 based on Dec 2020 data
Advanced Food Products employed 150 based on Dec 2020 data
Polymerpak (Replanet) – 165 employees – expanding in Visalia soon
Serpa Packaging – 150 employees
Sorma – 38 employees – print food packaging labeling, expanding soon
Visalia Ceramic Tile – 170 employees
UPS – as of Dec 2020 had them at 600
In Dec 2020, JoAnn Fabrics was at 300