When I built my career, it was in a generation where a person could stay with one company for 25 years. I did, not knowing I entered at a time of growth, of new inventions and adaptations at an accelerating rate! New varieties of tomatoes were developed, which no longer were picked by hand in multiple pickings. You know, tomatoes grown on trellises and only the ripe ones were picked each time a picking crew went through the field. Those tomatoes had to be handled with some care so as not to break. The new varieties stayed low to the ground and 95% would ripen at the same time, so harvesters had to be invented to pick a crop all at once. Tomatoes had to be separated from the vine mechanically, then dropped on a belt where sorters picked out the green, as well as blemished fruit. Next a transfer conveyor would drop the fruit into a bin for transport to the cannery. Those tomatoes had to have a tough skin, so they would not break with all that mechanical handling.

I ended up in Woodland,12 miles from the University where all these tomato variety, and harvester innovations were happening; University of California, Davis. The company was Contadina Foods, which had been acquired by Carnation Company a few years before I joined them. Contadina Foods was founded by a family in Chicago, but when the Mafia found them, they fled to California where they did well, establishing 3 canneries mainly for tomatoes, but also peaches and fruit cocktail in one of the plants. Red Kiehn was the plant manager in Woodland at that time. He came up through the ranks, did not have a college degree, but was an effective manager, who knew how to manage the operators, mechanics and electricians who kept the plant running. He ran a tight ship! He commanded respect, even if they were not always fond of his decisions. His boss relocated to Los Angeles, to the Carnation Headquarters building. Both Red and his boss had sons in the business. To some extend it was still a family run business. The same was the case at the San Jose site. The plant manager had two sons, one who remained in the business. 

Like most fresh fruit and vegetable canning, it is a very seasonal industry. A tomato season is 100 days long and in process 24/7. Concentrates are processed 24 hours for 6-12 days straight. Peeled and whole tomatoes are processed for two shifts / day. This means warehousing is year-round with all the costs thereof. Hourly workers work 8 hrs / day and salaried staff however many hours are needed, day and night, until the season is over. Especially the Woodland plant saw major capital improvements in the form of evaporators, a (55 gal.) drum fill system and a 300 gal. box filler. The latter two provided product that was re-constituted in the off-season into Spaghetti Sauce, Italian Sauce, Sweet and Sour sauce, and various other products. Those production lines only ran 5 days / week. 

After two years in the Field Dept., contracting with growers and managing deliveries to the cannery, my boss moved me to Woodland, where soon enough I was urged to join the Research Dept. This was the most advanced dept. in the industry after UC Davis. It was headed up by the "wild Hungarian", as he was known. Wild, in that he was not afraid to speak his mind. He did not care if toes were stepped on. My boss in the Field Dept. was also his boss. He was confident I made a mistake joining the Hungarian. Problem was: the Hungarian was right, most of the time. He worked very well with the UC Davis "father of canning tomato varieties", Jack Hanna. He shared his findings with Jack, to give him some direction for future variety developments. We had test plots with replica variety trials our competitors only dreamed of. The Hungarian was very secretive with our findings. We ran into all kinds of people in the field, picking his brain, but he kept the findings to himself. After the season he made up a report with our findings which not only went to the Field Dept. Manager, but as high as the VP of Operations in Los Angeles. After a couple of seasons it became very clear that the Roma pear shaped tomatoes were the most efficient variety for canning. This variety had a high soluble solids content, but more important, a high pectin / insoluble solids content, which made it most attractive for puree. Tomato puree had a different quality standard than tomato paste. The latter is processed strictly on concentration, 24% solids being the standard. Raw tomatoes have a solids content of 5-6%. The higher the solids, the fewer tomatoes were needed. Puree, on the other hand, is qualified by thickness, which means the solids range from 11.5 - 13% in the finished product, as long as a minimum thickness was attained. So the lower the solids the more efficient the product. 

Only one problem: growers were paid by the ton, and the Roma variety was not the highest producer in that sense. The "7879" round tomato variety was much more preferred by the growers. That is where the Hungarian and Field Dept. Manager got into arguments! Since they were paid by the ton, the grower won out and planted 7879 and only some Roma for the pear-shaped whole-peel product. To further prove his point the Hungarian got together with the Maintenance Foreman, who was open to the testing done in the Research Dept. and built us a little evaporator to test the end product of the different varieties. We also worked very well with the Quality Control Manager at the plant, learning how and what to measure, like acidity, % solids, Bostwick (a flow rate measurement), and others. 

This gave the Field Dept. Manager an idea: Since the Research Dept. was doing more work in line of quality control, that Dept. should fall under QC, instead of the Field Dept. That way he would not have to argue with the Hungarian anymore... It worked; Corporate Mgt. went for it! Alas, the Research reports still were critical of the Field Dept. 

At the Plant Manager level the culture also went up and down. Red could look back on a gratifying career upon retirement. The Assistant Plant Manager followed him up. He was more personable, but after a few years had the misfortune of sterilization problems at the drum filler and box filler. Because the of the larger containers for the the thicker paste, (32%), the fill chamber was pre-sterilized. The fill and cap procedures were performed under sterile conditions. Any leaks and the drum or box would go bad and blow up. It took two seasons of many leakers. Those were immediately re-processed into Spaghetti Sauce or other products to at least salvage the paste. All through the year, boxes would blow up. It required constant inspection, and if a shipped container blew up, the customer had to be refunded or another bin shipped. This cost him his job and an outside manager was brought in. Interestingly, this was one of those situations where an executive is let go temporarily to gain outside experience. After a given amount of time, 2 years in this case, he goes back to his former employer. He was followed up by another type. This was a manager good at fixing problems in a troubled company. He came from another division in Carnation company where he had performed such a task. 

In addition, Carnation Company had been taken over by Nestle. That included the Contadina Foods operations. The Nestle presence was clearly sensed by all of us. Contadina did not fit in the Nestle plan. Nestle is used to move products in a quick movement from production to client. Having to store product year round, because it could only be produced 100 days of the year, and not moved out or re-processed fast enough was foreign to Nestle. All Contadina plants were sold and now operated by farmer cooperatives. The growth spurts are gone. The tomato canning industry still has a big influence on California business, but has become more routine based on demand and supply.