This vacant Turlock field soon will help turn food waste into renewable energy for homes

An empty alfalfa field in west Turlock soon will be transformed into a high-tech facility that turns food waste into renewable fuel.

State and local dignitaries gathered on West Main Street for the groundbreaking of the newest Divert food waste recovery plant. The company turns unsold food from supermarkets, retailers, restaurants and manufacturers into natural gas that can be used to power homes and businesses.

Facility construction is set to begin on an 18-acre parcel of land just south of the Valley Milk plant near the intersection of Main and Washington Road. Work to finish the 65,000-square-foot plant is expected to take about a year, with plans for a summer 2024 opening.

Divert CEO and co-founder Ryan Begin spoke to a small crowd of city municipal and business leaders and said the company is working to tackle the 30% to 40% of food produced nationally that winds up in landfills. Once fully operational, the Turlock plant should process some 100,000 tons of wasted food each year.

“It’s not just taking wasted food and getting it out of the landfill. It’s what do you do with that food? We have to do something more intelligent, something better,” Begin said. “That’s really the approach we’ve taken here as a facility. That’s the approach we take with our customers.”

Turlock’s will be the largest plant to date built by Divert, a Massachusetts-based company founded in 2007 that currently has 10 processing sites across the country. The new plant will replace Turlock’s existing Divert operation, a smaller food analytics and packaging removal facility on Soderquist Road that opened in 2020.

The new plant will incorporate the company’s food analytics, waste processing and energy conversion divisions. Divert processes and analyzes organic food waste for companies and organizations, donates usable items and then liquefies the rest to be converted into renewable natural gas.

The company has partnered with PG&E, and once up and running, the Turlock plant should make enough natural gas to fuel about 3,000 homes per year. It currently has contracts with several major grocery and retail chains including Safeway, Albertsons, CVS, Target, Midwest grocery giant Kroger and international supermarket supplier Ahold Delhaize.

State Treasurer Fiona Ma attended the groundbreaking ceremony and emphasized how Divert fits into the state’s climate goals and new organic waste legislation like AB 1826 and SB 1383, which are meant to reduce greenhouse gas emission that contribute to climate change.

Ma also said the opening of the Turlock plant could have a ripple affect across the Valley.

“Whenever any company, especially a tech innovative company (like Divert), comes to a city or a county, it really does change the community in terms of high-quality jobs, which then necessitates housing and better schools and stores and in this case better food access in the partnership with the food bank,” Ma said. “This is really a great partnership here in this community and I see big things happening.”

The Turlock facility will focus on handling contaminated food waste and packaging. The company also has partnered with the Second Harvest food bank in Manteca, which serves the Central Valley and is part of the larger Feeding America nonprofit. The groundbreaking ceremony included a donation of about 600 pounds of food, largely donated from Safeway and CVS, to Second Harvest.

Divert’s Begin said the “phenomenal” relationship between the company and Turlock has helped make the decision to expand in the city an easy one. He said the new plant’s location — nestled amid the region’s powerhouse ag businesses like Blue Diamond, Foster Farms and Valley Milk — also opens up opportunities for more partnerships with Valley producers and manufacturers.

Turlock Mayor Amy Bublak also praised the potential synergies at work between Divert and Valley food producers.

“It is an honor as the city of Turlock to be at the forefront of what we’re doing here,” Bublak said. “We are part of a team here with Divert that is going to show the rest of the world how this is done. This is synergy.”