Bicycling in Sonoma County in the 70s, I never saw another cyclist. And in the autumn the air was redolent with the scents of ripening apples, pears, etc. It wasn't a wine monoculture.
By Julie Johnson, Reporter Updated May 15, 2025 9:11 a.m. - San Francisco Chronicle
Inside one of the nation’s largest organic apple canneries, glass jars rumble down conveyor belts to robot arms delivering squirts of apple juice, apple sauce and apple cider vinegar. A hulking stainless steel machine fills plastic fruit pouches before they tumble down the line to be pasteurized and cooled.
Manzana Products Co. started nearly a century ago as a fruit drying hub in Sebastopol’s Green Valley, at a time when fruit trees far outnumbered grapevines. It grew into a major apple processing plant. But Sonoma County’s apple harvest has been declining for decades, and today most of Manzana’s apples are trucked in from Washington State farms.
So Manzana is pulling up stakes for Yakima County — taking about 180 Bay Area jobs and local tax revenues with it.
“If we want to be here another 100 years, we need to move,” Manzana chief executive officer Andy Kay said.
Kay said many factors led to the decision, which the company has been considering for years. Manzana (which means apple in Spanish) was locally owned until 2012 when Agrial, a large French agricultural cooperative, purchased the company as a beachhead into U.S. farming.
Manzana wanted to grow, Kay said, but the company couldn’t expand at its current site, which is hemmed in by farmlands and rural roads. Another issue was the high cost of doing business in California — taxes, gas prices and regulatory costs, among them, all worsened by high inflation in 2021 and 2022 — versus Washington state, where most domestic apples are grown.
The organic apple industry isn’t declining — far from it, said Kay. It just isn’t in California.
Organic applesauce is a Bay Area special. Now the factory is moving away
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