LMC Extends Reach in Walnut Shelling Industry
After decades of providing equipment for the walnut shelling industry, LMC has continued to expand its reach each year, due largely in part to California sales representative Beeler Industries. LMC’s most recent venture with Beeler Industries was to design and provide equipment for Poindexter Nut Company’s processing plant located in Selma, California.
Poindexter Nut Company was founded in 1969 as a small roadside walnut dehydrator in the heart of California’s San Joaquin Valley. Today, Poindexter Nut Company has grown to be one of California’s leading walnut handlers and processors.
Poindexter Nut Company’s commitment to continued improvement is demonstrated through their state of the art walnut processing plant. Currently, the facility is processing over 50 million pounds of walnuts per year and can be expanded to process 120 million pounds of walnuts per year.
- 200,000 square foot facility
- Over 61,000 square feet of cold storage space
- State of the art processing lines and laser sorters
- 10 silos
- Patented Napasol pasteurization
- Highly automated casing, packaging, and palletizing equipment
- 1.1 megawatt (MW) solar farm
In addition to the current Napasol steam pasteurization system, Poindexter Nut Company has ordered the largest U.S. walnut Napasol pasteurization system to handle growing demand for naturally pasteurized walnuts. The new system has a throughput of 13,000 pounds per hour and is anticipated to be operational in March 2016.
At the beginning of this month, Poindexter Nut Company finalized an agreement to expand the existing 1.1 MWdc solar capacity by another 1.4 MWdc. The expansion projects comprise of two solar photovoltaic systems sized at 297.6 kilowatts (kWdc) and 1078.8 kWdc. The addition of the new solar system will boost overall solar generation to nearly 4 million kWh of clean solar power annually. This reduces the amount of Poindexter Nut Company utility power usage by up to 85%.