Saturday, Sep. 03, 2011

Diamond Pet Foods brings jobs to Ripon

By John Holland - jholland@modbee.com   E-Mail

RIPON -- Construction likely will finish by March on a pet food factory that will employ about 120 people, an executive said Thursday.

Diamond Pet Foods, which already runs a plant in Lathrop, is building another at the former Neenah Paper Inc. mill on South Stockton Avenue.

Wet weather slowed the project a little, but it is mostly on schedule, said Mark Schell, manufacturing vice president of the Missouri-based company.

 The Lathrop site, which Diamond has operated since 1998, also employs about 120 people. Some of the Ripon plant workers have been hired and are being trained in Lathrop, Schell said.

Diamond specializes in ingredients such as bison, venison, duck and sweet potatoes. The company, founded in 1970, also has plants in Meta, Mo., and Gaston, S.C.

The work at the 157-acre Ripon site includes installation of large overhead bins for the raw materials and machinery for grinding, extruding, drying and packaging the products.

Diamond paid $9 million for the property, which has four buildings totaling 300,030 square feet. The largest is for manufacturing; the others are for storage and distribution.

Simpson-Lee Paper Co. opened the paper mill in 1961. It was sold to Fox River Paper Co. in 1996 and to Neenah in 2007. More than 200 people worked there at the peak.

The new jobs will be welcome in San Joaquin County, which had a jobless rate of 17.5 percent in July.

"I think it's great," said Michael Ammann, president and chief executive officer of the San Joaquin Partnership, which works to boost the county economy. "It's based upon something that we do well, which is food processing, but it's a specialty."

Ammann, who toured the site in July, said Diamond people told him they were pleased with both the production work force at Lathrop and the construction crew in Ripon.

Mayor Elden "Red" Nutt also was on the tour.

"It looks like they are going to be here to stay and provide some jobs for Ripon and the area," he said.

Bee staff writer John Holland can be reached at jholland@modbee.com or (209) 578-2385.

Read more: http://www.modbee.com/2011/09/03/1844630/diamond-pet-foods-brings-jobs.html#ixzz1XCfeDtmd