Texas Firm Buying Fullerton Cannery in $40-Million Deal
Hunt-Wesson Inc.’s shuttered tomato processing plant in Fullerton, a vestige of the once-flourishing canning industry in Southern California, will be sold to Lincoln Property Co. of Texas, city officials said Wednesday.
In one of the largest deals reported in North County’s manufacturing base in recent years, Lincoln plans to acquire the site’s three structures--totaling about 750,000 square feet--and construct five more industrial buildings.
The deal, which is expected to close next month, is estimated at $40 million, industry sources said.
Officials from Lincoln Property and Hunt-Wesson declined to comment.
The Fullerton plant was the late billionaire Norton Simon’s first food-processing business that grew to include the multibillion-dollar Hunt-Wesson operation, which features such household brands as Wesson oil, Peter Pan peanut butter and Orville Redenbacher popcorn.
The cannery, which once churned millions of pounds of tomatoes into paste, catsup and spaghetti sauce, was closed last year by Hunt-Wesson’s parent, Con-Agra Inc., for newer plants in Northern California, closer to the tomato fields.
But the city has seen a resurgence in other manufacturing, sparked by the booming economy. Fullerton’s industrial vacancy rate, at double-digit levels four years ago, has fallen to 6.13% this quarter, according to CB Richard Ellis. The vacancy rate was at 6.50% the previous quarter.
“It is a premium location for industry because it’s centrally located between Los Angeles and the Orange County markets,” said Michael Meyer, managing partner of E&Y;/Kenneth Laventhal Real Estate Group.
Fullerton has nine vacant industrial sites, each under 9 acres. But over the past 18 months, companies have begun to build on the sites or have announced plans to develop them. Most of the developments are being planned by companies already in Fullerton that are looking to expand, said Kay Miller, the city’s economic development director.
The North Pointe Commerce Center, built in 1989 near the Hunt-Wesson property, has filled its three vacant lots, Miller added.
In closing one of Southern California’s largest canneries last year, Hunt-Wesson laid off 325 full-time workers, as well as 450 seasonal canning employees, as part of a restructuring plan by parent ConAgra.
Built in the 1920s as an orange juice processing plant, the Fullerton factory soon went bankrupt. But in 1931, Simon acquired the site for $7,000, and soon reaped sales of $9 million a year. Accumulating profits, he bought the Hunt Brothers Packing Co., a San Francisco-based tomato processing business, in the 1940s.
Moving the headquarters to Fullerton, Simon switched from oranges to tomatoes and by the 1950s merged Hunt Foods with his latest acquisition, the Wesson Co. The Hunt-Wesson Co. became a powerhouse, growing into the world’s largest tomato processor.
Throughout the 1980s, the company changed hands several times before being acquired in 1990 by ConAgra.
Simon, who died in 1993, also assembled a renowned collection of modern art displayed in Pasadena.
