Company hopes to grow future in Tulare

 12:36 AM, Apr. 27, 2012  | 

Written by

DONNA-MARIE SONNICHSEN

 An international animal nutrition company bringing about 40 new jobs to Tulare also wants to get young people excited about agricultural careers.

"We feel agriculture is losing good people to other disciplines that appear to be more exciting, so the idea is to instill an interest in agriculture and science," said Tyler Bramble, Alltech Western U.S. regional manager.

One of the ways it does that is through college competitions at the graduate and undergraduate levels, and the company has already begun meeting with professors and administrators at universities in the region, he said.

The Kentucky-based company also likes recruiting right out of school, Bramble said. "Our company has an affinity for young people. They have the enthusiasm, the ideas and the energy, and I get the opportunity to train them."

Tulare Chamber of Commerce CEO Nina Akin said local officials are excited about the prospect of Alltech opening its doors in the city.

"Tulare is dairy," Akin said. "They are bringing the cutting edge of animal nutrition technology to us."

Alltech expects to start construction in about four months on 8.5 acres of land between Paige Avenue and the Edison Energy Education Center on Laspina Street in Tulare.

It is building an 8,000-square-foot office and laboratory facility as well as a 30,000- to 40,000-square-foot warehouse production facility and hopes to build a second warehouse later on, the regional manager said.

"My vision is this is literally a resource for the dairy community," Bramble said, adding that labs will facilitate Alltech's own research and development, and hopefully provide a commercial lab resource for dairy operators.

The company describes itself a solutions provider and has manufactured a variety of technologies to solve industry problems, Bramble said.

Included are things like a new product that will save dairy operators money on nutrition that is added to animal feed, and figuring out how to provide easy access to a hard-to-obtain mineral that will help with cow reproduction, he said.

The company may not stop at animals, though. It is in the process of working with the Federal Drug Administration to create an Alltech Life Sciences division looking into things like Alzheimer's disease, Bramble said.

Although the privately owned company considered potential sites throughout California, it "just kept coming back" to the Tulare area, and when it learned the land it liked best was envisioned as a future agriculture business park, it was sold, Bramble said. Having the International Agri-Center, home to the world's largest farm expo, as a neighbor was also enticing since Alltech has been part of the expo for more than a decade and has clients all over the world interested in attending, he added.

Bramble said the company will be able to help the dairy industry whether it be fixing problems on the farm, making feed rations cheaper or increasing milk production, to name a few.

"I think we're bringing a business that has the opportunity to impact a big percentage of the community," Bramble said.

A global giant with divisions in 120 countries, Alltech is expected to be worth $1 billion within the next 18 months, Bramble said

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