Fresno fresh-cut produce company expands
His company, 1st Quality Produce, provides school districts, restaurants, hotels and other food-service businesses statewide with fresh cut peppers, zucchini, and fruit including pineapple, mangoes and melons.
After 14 years of squeezing employees and cold storage refrigerators into a 12,000-square-foot building south of downtown Fresno, 1st Quality has expanded into a new facility nearly two miles away in southeast Fresno.
The move — three years in the making — consolidates the entire company including the production operation, which has operated in Dinuba, into a 35,000-square-foot building that once housed a pipe company at Orange and Church avenues.
The expansion allows the company to increase its statewide distribution operation, to add up to 9,000 square feet of cold storage and to create a quarter-acre vegetable garden on the 3.5-acre site for educational use in the future. In the last six to eight months, the company hired about 20 new employees, increasing its staff to more than 75 people who work year-round.
Other plans include finding ways to recycle the water the company uses to wash and chlorinate fruits and vegetables...
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