New refrigerated almond storage facility to open in Madera

MADERA, Calif. (KFSN) -- Steve Sagouspe and his partner Bobby Sullivan are all set to open Amond World in Madera.

Once the dust settles and construction is complete, the site will be home to a cold storage facility for locally grown almonds.

"It's too expensive for a farmer or a processor to build on its own so we're doing a public storage so that anybody can bring their almonds to us," says Sullivan.

Amond World will store almonds in two 250,000 square foot refrigerated buildings where temperatures dip down to 32 degrees.

"You can store these nuts up to two years without loss of integrity," says Sagouspe.

The crop is one of the Valley's biggest money-makers.

"We produce 80% of the almonds here in the Valley. Between us, Kern County, Fresno, Merced," says Madera City Council member Cece Gallegos.

And during a time when it has been difficult to move some commodities out of West Coast ports, refrigerated storage could come in handy.

Sullivan says 20% of the almond crop doesn't immediately go into the market and must be stored.

"So if you have a 3 billion pound market year, you got about 600 million pounds that haven't been sold," says Sullivan.

Adds Sagouspe:

"If they're just in dry storage, they get fumigated every 30-45 days. In cold storage, you fumigate them once going in and never touch them again."

Amond World will allow growers and processors to keep raw and finished product cold until it is ready to ship.

But the company won't package or process any nuts.

"No, because we'd be in competition and we don't want to do that. We want to be the Switzerland of cold storage."