Photo contributed.

The profile of the booming Visalia Industrial Park has changed significantly over the past 30 years — with the top 10 industries mostly out of business or shrunk considerably.

Even as more companies have landed there and expanded in an unprecedented boom in the past few years, the players, types of industries and significantly, the scale has changed radically.

Back in 1993, the top industry according to a report from the City of Visalia that year was Jostens American Yearbook, a commercial printing plant with a long history in the community. The company had seasonal employment as high as 700.

The work at Jostens was geared to print school yearbooks each winter. The plant was welcome back in the 1960s when it was hard in an ag region to find full-time jobs in winter months.

Today the big building houses an Italian produce packaging company – Sorma.

No. 2 on the list in 1993 was United States Department of Agriculture Cotton Classing Facility that employed as many as 350 people seasonally. Today, the government facility carries on its work but it employs just 50 in the three-month busy season and eight on a permanent basis. The loss of cotton acreage as well as advancements in technology account for declines in labor. Greg Townsend, director of the facility says the plant now covers four states with perhaps merely a quarter of the cotton gins it handled 30 years ago.

Who was No. 3 on the list? Eagle Snacks employed 338 workers, according to the city report. Then-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. Tulare County is the largest producer of dairy in the U.S. California Dairies today employs 500.

Vlasic Foods had a pickle plant in Visalia that employed 314 — No. 4 in employment on the list. The plant, once-owned by Campbell Soup closed in 1992.

No. 5 on the industry list was Sierra Pacific Apparel that employed 300 busy clothing makers. 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.

No. 6 was Knudsen Dairy Products that ended up going bankrupt and is no longer operating. The company employed 200 people in Visalia and was known as the largest cottage cheese plant in the U.S. Knudsen was bought out by Kraft but Kraft closed the Goshen Avenue plant in 2006. Today it is still a milk plant owned by Milk Specialties Global. The facility employs only a handful of workers.

California Pretzel was on the top 10 list too but the pretzel business is now long gone. Also on the 1993 list was Taycal Press that employed 160 people, but has closed their doors as well — another printing 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 has put an end to that.

So Visalia’s industrial profile from then to now suggests a 95% turnover in companies. Now, 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 square feet followed by the UPS hub. VF Corp. employs about 1000 people in Visalia.

And there is plenty more to come, suggests the Visalia Economic Development Corp., who states that there is 14 million square feet of industrial space development in the works in the city.

The new 400-job, 1 million square-foot Ace Hardware service center is about ready to open. This month another 1.2 mil square-foot warehouse being built on speculation is breaking ground a mile north of Riggin Avenue and west of Plaza Drive. The new facility is expected to open in October 2023 at a cost of $70 million. The same developer built two Amazon plants in the area 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 Avenue, where developer Butch Oldfield and others have parceled out two-, five- and 20-acre lots, companies like American Ceramic Tile are expanding. American Inc. now manufactures and custom fabricates as well, they employed 425 people in December 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.

In a statement, 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 people, based on Dec 2020 data

— Voltage Multipliers employed 220 people in Dec 2020

— Bluescope Buildings employed 185 people in Dec 2020

— Milgard Window and Doors employed 162 people based on Dec 2020 data

— Advanced Food Products employed 150 people 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 employed 600 people as of December 2020

—JoAnn Fabrics employed 300 people as of December 2020