Central Valley IFT meeting at Hilmar

We had a tremendous turnout for the joint NCIFT and CVIFT event at the new Hilmar Innovation Center!

We were honored to be one of the first groups to tour the brand new Hilmar Innovation Center. The tour was well received and showed the local food industry’s interest and appreciation for Hilmar’s contributions. The new center was built to meet new environmental and energy efficient standards and house both the Hilmar Ingredient and Cheese application laboratories; in support of customers and markets for Hilmar’s products. The Hilmar tour guides included Denise Skidmore, Gwen Bargetzi,Grace Harris, Jennifer Sutton and John Glaser.

Before the meeting, there was a mini suppliers expo.The exhibitors included SPI Group, Batory and IEH Laboratories, plus Ogawa, Mitsubishi, David Michael,Horn and Ful-Flav-R Foods. Eric Le Barbe provided the social hour and dinner wine on behalf of his company,EJ Gallo and it was very much appreciated.  The tours,social hour, vendor exhibits and dinner went flawlessly.

Susan England,Interim Chair of CVIFT Subsection invited everyone to her upcoming November 12th dinner event in Stockton with a speaker on from the Olive Board and Scott Nichols invited players to come to the October 10th SJVIFT Scholarship Golf Outing. Erin Evers told the group about her success with getting the New Professionals subgroup going in the Bay Area with a slideshow presentation and plans to have an event in the Valley next year. Marty Potnick,NCIFT Chair elect announced the new NCIFT officers for 2013-14 and expressed that the people involvement and creating value for IFT and NCIFT members were of utmost importance.  Russ Nishikawa thanked our Hilmar hosts, Eric and Gallo, and the attendees.