Before a series of upgrades beginning in the 1990s, more than 80 people stood shoulder-to-shoulder over the conveyor belts at Blue Diamond’s plant in midtown, sorting and grading the stream of incoming almonds, picking out stray sticks and rocks.
Now, equipped with more efficient machinery, this section of the plant is staffed by just eight. In another area of the factory, machines installed four years earlier already lack certain even-more-modern contrivances.
And recently, after 110 years in midtown, Blue Diamond officials announced that the Sacramento almond plant had fallen behind the times, and would be shut down sometime between late 2026 and mid-2027.
The plant is a vestige of an industry that once loomed large here. Its brand has become a nostalgia-laced bit of Sacramento identity, and an employer for generations of locals…