Cargill sells California beef plant to Central Valley Meat

Cargill confirmed Thursday it has entered an agreement to sell off a California processing plant to the state’s largest beef producer.

Central Valley Meat Holding Company will acquire the food giant’s processing facility in Fresno for an undisclosed amount, according to an emailed statement to Agriculture Dive. The California beef producer aims to retain as many of the plant’s 880 employees as possible.

“With this sale, Cargill’s priorities were to place as many of our workers as possible into jobs and to retain the beef processing capacity for California producers,” a Cargill spokesperson said.

Central Valley Meat solidified itself as a dominant player in the California beef industry following the 2019 acquisition of Harris Farms, which operates the state’s largest feedlot located about an hour’s drive from Fresno. The producer employs more than 2,000 workers.

The acquisition of the Cargill plant represents a “significant expansion” in capacity, according to Central Valley Meat. The purchase will allow the California producer to better respond to market demands and drive efficiencies across its supply chain.

“We’re excited to work alongside cattle producers in the state and region to continue delivering quality beef products for our customers and consumers,” Central Valley Meat CEO and owner Brian Coelho said in a statement.

Cargill employees will have the opportunity to “explore roles” within Central Valley Meat, the California processor said in a statement. Cargill has yet to file the required notice with the state that would indicate mass layoffs.

The sale comes less than a month after Cargill offloaded eight grain facilities in the Midwest to rival CHS. Global food giants’ profits have suffered as lower commodity prices eat away at earnings.

https://www.agriculturedive.com/news/cargill-sells-california-beef-plant-fresno-central-valley-meat/715792/

U.S. Department of Commerce Invests $600,000 to Bolster Business Growth in Tulare, California

WASHINGTON – Today, the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Economic Development Administration (EDA) is awarding a $600,000 grant to the city of Tulare, California, to make building renovations to accommodate new business growth and startup expansion.

This grant will support the creation of a fabrication facility which will house 3D printers, laser cutters, and other equipment small businesses can access for prototyping and producing new products. This EDA investment will be matched with $210,000 in local funds and is expected to create 72 jobs, according to grantee estimates.

“The Economic Development Administration plays an important role in helping communities implement their plans to provide the vital infrastructure that businesses need to be successful,” said Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Economic Development Alejandra Y. Castillo. “This EDA investment will help provide a state-of-the-art space where entrepreneurs can grow their businesses, contributing to regional job creation and economic resilience.”

“California’s innovation and entrepreneurial spirit can be found in every region of our state, from San Francisco to the Central Valley. Right here in Tulare, an investment from the Economic Development Administration will foster economic growth and job creation,” said Governor Gavin Newsom.

“Infrastructure that supports Tulare’s small business owners and entrepreneurs is critical to boosting the Central Valley’s economy,” said Senator Alex Padilla. “As we celebrate Small Business Month, this investment will spur innovation and create good-paying jobs by providing hardworking small business owners important tools to grow their enterprises.”

“I applaud the EDA for delivering this funding which will create jobs, grow businesses, and spur economic growth,” said Senator Laphonza Butler. “These federal dollars going to Tulare will create spaces that help ensure small businesses get the cutting-edge technology they need to keep our local economies strong.”

About the U.S. Economic Development Administration (www.eda.gov)
The mission of the U.S. Economic Development Administration (EDA) is to lead the federal economic development agenda by promoting competitiveness and preparing the nation’s regions for growth and success in the worldwide economy. An agency within the U.S. Department of Commerce, EDA invests in communities and supports regional collaboration in order to create jobs for U.S. workers, promote American innovation, and accelerate long-term sustainable economic growth.

https://www.eda.gov/news/press-release/2024/05/07/us-department-commerce-invests-600000-bolster-business-growth-tulare

VOLT Institute

VOLT Institute Implements Changes for Enhanced Realism in Training

Enhancing Practical Skills and Safety: VOLT Institute is rolling out changes starting this March to make its training more reflective of real-world job experiences in production settings. Key updates include a stricter emphasis on attendance, punctuality, continuous safety practices, and lean manufacturing principles, notably 5S and TIMWOODS wastes, along with GEMBA, JIT, and Kaizen for continuous improvement. Shifts and Timeclock Integration: To mimic actual job settings, students will now use a timeclock for tracking attendance, refer to sessions as “shifts”, and participate in shift change meetings to discuss safety, key topics, and foster engagement in learning and skills development.

Expanding Access with VOLT On the Go (VOTG)

Reaching Underserved Communities: Funded by an Economic Development Administration (EDA) grant, VOTG aims to extend VOLT’s educational offerings to investors and underserved communities. The program provides practical knowledge in essential technical areas through a hands-on approach, enabling entry into the job market. Partnerships with Amatrol and SACA support equipment provision and micro-certification, ensuring significant skill development. Successful Launch and Future Plans: The VOTG Mechanical Drives course, initiated in partnership with Turlock Adult School, saw a promising start with 13 attendees learning vital mechanical skills. With more classes on the horizon, these courses, free to the public via an EDA grant, offer invaluable “hands-on” training within local communities.

VOLT On the Go Gains Momentum

Highlight at Economic Elevate: At the recent Turlock Economic Elevate, VOLT showcased the VOTG program’s potential to empower local communities and attract investor interest. Demonstrations of Amatrol’s portable training units underscored the program’s flexibility and efficiency in delivering technical skills training on the go.

New Scholarship Opportunities

Supporting Local Residents: New scholarships, thanks to contributions from several city councils and Aemetis Inc., are now available for residents interested in pursuing maintenance mechanic careers at VOLT Institute, demonstrating ongoing community support and commitment to workforce development.

https://acrobat.adobe.com/id/urn:aaid:sc:US:61a8e814-b867-4146-b614-87b5b3053f34

FRESNO TECH FIRM ACQUIRES SAN JOSE COMPANY FOR $1.7M

Fresno-based Xobee Networks announced Wednesday that it has acquired Myers Network Solutions, a tech solutions provider based out of San Jose.

The acquisition aims to build on Xobee Networks managed IT service clientele as well as allow Xobee to provide resources and products to even more businesses in the Bay Area.

“Through this investment, Xobee will embolden and scale our resources and services to clients within San Jose and across the state,” said Eric Rawn, Xobee Networks founder and CEO. “We are investing in Myers Network Solutions because they are the marquee computer business solutions experts in San Jose, and we are well-positioned to help strengthen their team, resources, and products toward current and future clients.”

Xobee Networks agreed to purchase Myers Network Solutions for $1.7 million. Xobee plans to maintain the entire staff at Myers as they welcome them into the Xobee Networks brand.

Xobee Networks’ addition of Myers Network Solutions adds strength to a workforce of more than 100 skilled tech professionals already at Xobee.

With this acquisition, Xobee hopes to expand its managed support, cloud computing, cybersecurity, telecommunications, web development and networking services at an affordable cost.

“Since the agreement between Xobee Networks and Myers Network Solutions earlier this year, Xobee has been able to increase revenue month over month with an 18% growth in host services offerings,” according to a Xobee news release.

Xobee Networks was founded in 1996 by Eric Rawn, and has since grown to serve thousands of clients throughout California.

Rawn also owns tech solutions firm BCT Consulting in Fresno.

https://thebusinessjournal.com/fresno-tech-firm-acquires-san-jose-company-for-1-7m/

$6M in small business grant money authorized by Kings County board of supervisors

The Kings County board of supervisors voted 4-0 to authorize the Kings County Economic Development Corporation to execute small business contracts for grant funding through the American Rescue Plan Act.

Lance Lippincott, county Economic and Workforce Development Director, submitted a request to the board for $500,000 in grant funding to be put toward the Small Business Assistance Program his department developed. Thanks to support from county supervisors Doug Verboon and Richard Valle, Lippincott was authorized $6 million in funding, he said. “The board has been proactive in helping small businesses, especially going into the recession,” Lippincott said. The new authorization will help Kings County businesses hurt by the COVID-19 pandemic. “Healthy businesses support a healthy county,” Supervisor Richard Valle said.

According to Valle, the pandemic still generates a financial strain for some local businesses and the money will ease those burdens. Kings County as a whole faced difficulty in 2020 with getting the word out to those business owners needing the support. Some businesses were uncertain if they qualified while others were concerned about too much government overreach and involvement, he said.

While some positive impact came from the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES) money, the ARPA grant money provides more flexibility for qualifying businesses. The process for the grants is far easier to go through for business owners and Lippincott’s department plans to be as helpful as possible. “If in doubt, apply,” Valle added. There are requirements for businesses to be eligible for the grant money. The business must maintain a current and valid license; must have been in operation prior to March 15, 2020; and have 100 or fewer employees.

There is a fourth requirement specific to the pandemic. The business must have incurred significant financial loss attributed to COVID-19. According to Lippincott, this financial loss must be reflected in a decrease in gross receipts between 2019-20 and 2020-21. Contact the Kings County Economic Development Corporation for more information about Kings County small business grants.

https://hanfordsentinel.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/6m-in-small-business-grant-money-authorized-by-kings-county-board-of-supervisors/article_b4d645e9-e6c6-55a2-8699-ca17f19fef7e.html

FOSTER FARMS ANNOUNCES NEW OWNER, CEO

Connecticut based holding company Atlas Holdings announced Tuesday that it has acquired Foster Farms, the 83-year-old poultry giant based in Livingston. Foster Farms’ has multiple facilities in the Central Valley, including Fresno, Kerman, Turlock, Caruthers and Porterville. The company, which generates revenues of approximately $3 billion annually, will still operate under the Foster Farms name. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

Foster Farms has major processing facilities in California, Washington, Louisiana, Oregon and Alabama and has more than 10,000 employees. Along with news of the acquisition, Atlas also announced that Donnie Smith, former CEO of Tyson Foods from 2009 to 2016, is Foster Farms’ new CEO and chairman. “I love the poultry industry and am proud that Atlas has asked me to become the CEO of Foster Farms,” said Smith. “I’ve long been an admirer of the Foster Family and the business they’ve built over the past eight decades. In this new era, we will maintain and further that legacy, rooted in animal welfare, superior product quality, customer service and community engagement.”

https://thebusinessjournal.com/foster-farms-announces-new-owner-ceo/?mc_cid=970dee8ab2&mc_eid=d813f251f8

T-Mobile begins construction on Kingsburg call center

After more than two years of discussions between T-Mobile and the city of Kingsburg, the wireless carrier is moving forward with construction at the former Kmart. T-Mobile is building the Central Valley Customer Experience Center (CEC), a call center serving customers in the western region of the U.S. It’s slated to open to employees in 2022 and is expected to create about 1,000 new jobs. “It’s a big deal for Kingsburg,” said Alexander Henderson, the city manager of Kingsburg. “Certainly, it’s a big deal for Fresno County, and you know it’s a big deal for the Central Valley overall.”

The facility will become one of the largest employers in Kingsburg alongside Sun-Maid Raisins.

https://abc30.com/t-mobile-kingsburg-call-center/10489232/#:~:text=%20KINGSBURG%2C%20Calif.%20%28KFSN%29%20–%20After%20more%20than,customers%20in%20the%20western%20region%20of%20the%20U.S.

How California’s Central Valley is working to become tech hot spot

MODESTO, Calif. — Alejandro Alcazar had worked as a digital marketing coordinator for about a year when he discovered an interest in coding.

“I grew really interested in computer programming through messing with our (company) website and learning a lot about data science,” he said.

Alcazar has a degree in business administration, but he wasn’t using those skills in his job. Still, he didn’t know enough about web development to secure a position in the industry. That’s when he learned about classes at Bay Valley Tech, a Modesto-based coding school.

The 24-year-old enrolled in early 2020, and, after completing the seven-month program, got a job as a business intelligence analyst for a winery.

In his new job, Alcazar said he uses skills he developed at Bay Valley Tech to work with the company’s internal dashboards that show product and demographic data, as well as its search engine. His pay also increased by more than 30% in his new role.

Workers like Alcazar aren’t the only ones wanting to capitalize on the benefits of the tech industry. If a city can retain its tech workers, it can usually count on a boost to the local economy and an influx of other businesses and professionals such as lawyers and accountants.

But keeping tech workers local requires innovation and incentive, as leaders across Stanislaus County in California’s Central Valley are finding out.

Compared with other industries, the tech sector has remained competitive in the COVID-19 pandemic. Remote work has become the new normal, and the tech industry was quick to adapt, expanding flexible work policies into post-pandemic times.

Now, office parks sit empty and cities and corporations must grapple with the changing nature of office work and all the possibilities it brings.

Less than two hours east of the Bay Area, the Central Valley isn’t exactly known as a tech hub. Agriculture, logistics and manufacturing dominate the area; the region is home to the world’s largest commercial winery and farms that feed the nation.

The workforce reflects that too — only 17% of Stanislaus County residents have a bachelor’s degree or higher, Census data shows. Given that, it may not be surprising that Modesto, the county’s largest city, has no four-year university of its own.

The “skills gap” in the workforce is only widening. Local high schools and colleges have struggled to keep up as the economy evolves to favor more tech-forward industries.

Tech firms bypass Central Valley
As local talent pools dry up, Silicon Valley companies looking to expand have often picked other states. such as Texas and Idaho, instead of the county next door.

“There’s such a shortage of tech workers in the Bay Area right now that virtually every large tech firm has already expanded out of state looking for more talent,” said Phillip Lan, co-founder of Bay Valley Tech, a local coding academy. “Unfortunately, the vast majority of them have stepped over the Central Valley, just because they don’t feel like there’s enough of a technical workforce here yet.”

Lan and his team are trying to change that. Bay Valley Tech offers free and low-cost coding classes to students in a variety of web-based development languages, providing hands-on training through lessons, events like hackathons, and networking opportunities.

So far, Lan said, Bay Valley Tech has trained more than 150 students and is on pace to reach 300 in 2021. But his goals are set higher.

“Our strategy is that if we train enough people here in the Central Valley, that’ll start to get the attention of these larger tech companies like Uber, Airbnb and Google,” he said. “We’re looking to build out Bay Valley (Tech’s) expertise sector by sector.”

In the past, tech hub development depended in part on the physical infrastructure a city could provide — like Silicon Valley’s history of making computer chips and Austin’s decades-long infrastructure support for its tech industry. But with the pandemic’s new normal and the majority of Silicon Valley’s big tech firms building virtual products, physical space is no longer at a premium.

Focus is on training workers
Instead, Bay Valley Tech and other organizations in the Central Valley are focusing on training employees who can accept remote jobs from Bay Area-based companies or work in satellite offices closer to home.

Daisy Mayorga leads the local chapter of Google’s Women Techmakers, aimed at providing community and resources for women in the industry. She said it’s critical that women and other underrepresented groups in tech are seen and heard by potential employers.

“When people start to see that, you’ll see more businesses start to open and more people start to want to start their own software companies,” she said.

In addition to jobs related to software, Modesto is trying to attract employers who build hardware. The VOLT Institute, a trade school focused on maintenance mechanics and mechatronics, recently acquired new equipment to train workers.

Kevin Fox, director of marketing and student engagement at VOLT, said the pandemic has taught the staff that improving workers’ skills is crucial, especially when employers are “desperate to bring anybody who is qualified with the proper skill set on to fill those positions that are vacant.”

Alcazar agrees.

He said the Central Valley has plenty of residents who are hungry for these kinds of opportunities.

“There are young people here that are just dying to get a good job and try something creative and useful,” he said. “Something that benefits a community.”

Source: Kristina Karisch covers economic development for The Modesto Bee. This dispatch is part of a series called “On the Ground” with Report for America, an initiative of The GroundTruth Project. Follow her on Twitter: @kristinakarisch

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2021/03/11/how-californias-central-valley-working-become-tech-hot-spot-column/6936506002/

Nautilus: transforming the data center industry

Nautilus Data Technologies is a global pioneer in water-cooled data centers and is leading a global transformation to ultra-efficient, high-performance and environmentally sustainable operations in the data center sector.

James Connaughton is the CEO at Nautilus. Having joined the organisation in March 2016, he has overseen the implementation of the world’s first water-cooled and water-borne data center with Nautilus. “There are two essential features,” explains Connaughton. “The first and most important feature is cooling with naturally cold water, which is how all other major infrastructure sectors address the large amounts of heat generated by their systems. These include, for example, thermal power plants, ships, industrial processing facilities, and paper mills. Only data centers, generate heat at a similar industrial scale, still use massive and unsustainable air-cooling systems. The second feature is mobility–the ability to prefabricate the data center in large modules, and either assemble them onto a barge and deliver it fully ready to go, or transport the modules to a prepared site for rapid assembly. Placing essential infrastructure on barges—such as energy barges and water treatment barges–is a well-established model for enabling rapid and flexible access to such infrastructure in fast growing and emerging markets. The opportunity and need is equally strong today when it comes to providing access to digital infrastructure to those who currently lack it.”

Connaughton believes data centers are the newest and most important component of critical infrastructure that sustains and enriches the lives of people around the world. “Data centers now stand alongside power generation, drinking-water plants, waste-water plants, roads and other critical infrastructure that allows society to function and create good outcomes for people,” he explains. “Access to the water molecule and the electron has long been vitally important. Worldwide access to the photon for data delivery is the next essential piece.” Over the past two years, Connaughton has overseen the development of the company’s first full-scale commercial facility, which provides six megawatts of water-cooled data center capacity on a barge. He strives for an innovative approach across all his operations. “We’ve been on the arc of creative invention and cleverly practical engineering to make that a reality,” says Connaughton. “The first part of our company’s life has focused on building a functional prototype, and then using that experience to make the thousands of decisions of what not to do against the several hundred decisions of what to do in bringing a full scale facility into being. We’re really excited to be commissioning that data center in California in just a few weeks time.”

Nautilus is planning to develop facilities in North America, Europe and Asia, and has been contacted by potential partners to pursue projects in the Middle East, Africa, and South America. “Once our data center in North Carolina is up and running, we look forward to onboarding a great set of anchor customers,” says Connaughton. “We will show the world the ultra-efficiency, high-performance, and the strong sustainability of our approach. After that, we are ready to rapidly move into other locations to “productize” the technology and we look forward to partnering through joint ventures and technology licensing so that we can get this important technology out into the world as quickly as possible.”

https://www.technologymagazine.com/brochure/nautilus-transforming-data-center-industry

BITWISE CEO SEEKS TO HIRE 100-PLUS FOR DATA ENTRY

The CEO of Bitwise is putting out a call to hire more than 100 temporary data entry contractors who will work from home. Irma L. Olguin Jr. said in a Facebook post Friday afternoon that the workers would support efforts of Bitwise Industries, its web development arm Shift3 Technologies and mobile restaurant ordering app Ordrslip in “building things to help feed the elderly, save restaurants from going out of business and to help folks who’ve lost jobs regain employment.” The temporary (“could be days or weeks”) positions would be 40 hours a week and pay $15 per hour. Employment would be on a contract basis. Applicants must have their own computer, reliable Internet access and be able to type at reasonable speed, Olguin said.

https://thebusinessjournal.com/virus-diaries-bitwise-ceo-seeks-to-hire-100-plus-for-data-entry/#:~:text=The%20CEO%20of%20Bitwise%20is,who%20will%20work%20from%20home.&text=Employment%20would%20be%20on%20a%20contract%20basis.