FDBusiness.com

Blue Diamond Almonds, the world’s foremost almond processor and supplier of almond ingredients , is exhibiting at Fi Europe, 29 November – 1 December, to showcase its leadership in areas of critical interest to any ingredient buyer: food quality and safety, availability, customer service and reliability.

“Blue Diamond Almonds already exports to 90 countries,” noted Bill Morecraft, General Manager of the Industrial Products Division. “Growing our ingredients business in Europe is an important part of our global strategy and Fi Europe is an ideal venue to highlight our product and service strengths.”

Visitors to Blue Diamond Almonds’ stand will not only see product in virtually any form—whole, sliced, diced, split, slivered, ground, paste and more—but can discuss their own specific application needs with the Blue Diamond Almonds experts. Sectors include confectionery, bakery, cereals, desserts and snack applications. In addition, product quality and safety, availability and service issues are important topics.

For example, as a testament to Blue Diamond Almonds’ high standards of quality and safety, their Sacramento, California, plant was recently awarded the “Plant of the Year of the Pinnacle Club.”  This is the most prestigious food quality and safety award given to fruit and tree nut processors by the American Council for Food Safety & Quality.

The award identified the facility as the “best of the best” of the 75 facilities inspected.  The Council has a formal partnership agreement with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Blue Diamond Almonds’ rigorous quality assurance and safety processes include refrigerated storage as a standard for keeping their almonds food-safe and maintaining flavor and freshness.

With global demand for almonds growing rapidly, year-round availability is also a key area of interest to buyers.  Morecraft noted that the company’s ingredients business has increased 50 percent year over year.  Concurrently, the 2011 California almond crop is expected to be a record 1.95 billion pounds. Blue Diamond Almonds not only keeps up with demand, they proactively organize to meet future needs with a major expansion announced that will add new facilities as well as upgrade existing ones.

In addition, Blue Diamond Almonds is able to  leverage their leadership advantage with expert teams dedicated to global service, delivery and logistics.

“We have has always been a supplier of choice because we deliver what we promise, year-round,” said Morecraft. “We’ve organized to give our European and global customers the utmost confidence in our ability to provide precisely what they need, when they need it.”

All of these advantages add up to one thing: trust. In business for over 100 years, Blue Diamond Almonds has opened markets to almonds and continues to lead in ways important to food processors and manufacturers. As an ingredient, almonds are delicious, healthy, nutritious and flexible in form and function. Blue Diamond Almonds makes sure they are also of exceptional quality, safe, available and with a global support team that understands customer needs and responds with the highest standards of service.

About Blue Diamond Almonds
Blue Diamond Almonds (www.bluediamond.com), owned by over half of California’s almond growers, is the world’s leading grower and manufacturer of almond products. The company has a strong industrial presence as an ingredient for processed and prepared foods, as well as for bulk purchase. It is also noted for its consumer-branded almond products. Almonds are California’s Number One food export. California almonds rank among the nation’s Top Ten exports and provide the world with over 80 percent of its almond supply, with nearly 70 percent of the crop exported to over 90 countries. Blue Diamond Almonds is headquartered in Sacramento, California.