FAIRFIELD, CA CENTER OF SUPPORT FOR NORTHERN CALIFORNIA WINE INDUSTRY

SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA’S FAIRFIELD, CA CENTER OF SUPPORT FOR NORTHERN CALIFORNIA WINE INDUSTRY

http://www.fairfield4business.com

FAIRFIELD, Calif., January 22, 2008 — From beverage packaging solutions to glass container manufacturing companies, the city of Fairfield, CA is home to a myriad of companies that support Northern California’s wine industry. Located halfway between San Francisco and Sacramento, at the gateway to the Napa Valley, Fairfield offers a strategic location and value-priced real estate opportunities.
Wine-industry related businesses located in Fairfield include Saint-Gobain Containers, Owens-Brockway, ACI Cork USA, Biagi Brothers, Demptos Glass, Diablo Valley Packaging, Saury USA, and the Grateful Palate.

Reasons for Choosing Fairfield
Reasons for locating in Fairfield include: an accessible location with easy access to the heart of wine country in Napa and Sonoma, proximity to ports, freeways, airports, and rail lines, available land with room to expand, and an accessible and responsive city government.

Accessibility to Transportation
Fairfield is located halfway between San Francisco and Sacramento, approximately 15 miles from Napa and 27 from Sonoma County. It has easy access to four ports (Benicia, Oakland, San Francisco and West Sacramento), three international airports (San Francisco, Oakland, and Sacramento), passenger rail lines, rapid transit, and freight lines.

Three years ago Diablo Valley Packaging, http://www.dvpackaging.com, a family-owned packaging company, outgrew its facilities in Benicia, and moved its headquarters to a 100,000-square foot facility at 2373 North Watney Way in Fairfield. The company provides a wide range of packaging solutions for the food, beverage, and wine industries, from customized packaging programs to low-cost, commodity-grade-container options. One-third of the company’s business is related to the wine industry. Its products specific to the wine industry are glass packaging, wine bottles, the capsule, and in some cases, corks.

Easy access to the heart of California’s wine industry— Napa and Sonoma--was one of the main reasons the company chose to locate in Fairfield. Other factors included good warehousing capacity at a reasonable price and accessibility to transportation with good trucking rates into and out of the area.

“Fairfield has good geographics and demographics,” says Pete Reno, president of Diablo Valley Packaging. “Its freeway access is well-suited to receiving in-bound shipments as well as sending shipments out to our customers. Its location also benefits us because it provides access to a solid workforce from throughout the Bay Area and Sacramento.”

Saury USA, http://www.sauryusa.com, represents a French barrel manufacturer in business since 1993. It sells and markets French oak wine barrels to the wine industry and has its main office in Napa Valley’s Oakville, CA. The company is leasing a 25,875-square foot Fairfield warehouse located at 2345 South Watney Way. Future plans are being considered to house an American-Oak-production facility at the site, but no timeline has been established.

“Our reasons for opening a location in Fairfield were due to the fact that Fairfield is strategically located close to the Interstate,” says Bayard Fox, general manager of Saury USA.

Available and Responsive City Government

Saint-Gobain Containers is the second-largest glass container manufacturer in the nation. In 2006, the company relocated its wine-sector headquarters, warehouse, distribution facilities and operations in Fairfield from two buildings that had been in the city since 1995 into one new facility approximately 10 miles from the previous location. This new location provides a centralized office for the company’s wine-sector sales, operations management, and customer service.
The new facility, which has more than one million square feet of storage and warehouse space, located at 2600 Stanford Court, was built to serve the glass container distribution needs of California’s wine and food industry. It operates 24-hours a day, five days a week with a staff of approximately 80 people.
"The city of Fairfield worked diligently to support our vision of a state-of-the-art distribution center that we all could be proud of," said Peter Walters, Vice President, Purchasing and Distribution for Saint-Gobain Containers.

Access to Wine Country

Grateful Palate Imports, http://www.gratefulpalateimports.com, a wine importer and distributor, headquartered in Oxnard, CA since 1997, imports Australian wines and sells them through a distributor network. It also sells online, shipping to states that allow direct shipment of wine. The company has opened a warehouse and offices in a 60,000-square-foot space at 2449 South Watney Way in Fairfield.

“The Fairfield location provides us with accessibility to our distributors in Northern California’s wine regions,” says Ben DeSantis, controller of Grateful Palate Imports.

Since 2003, ACI Cork USA has been in Fairfield in a 30,000-square-foot, state-of-the-art processing plant at 2870 Cordelia Road. It imports and wholesales natural wine corks from Portugal where its parent company, Alvaro Coelho, Irmaos, S.A. is located. The Fairfield site, which has nine employees, provides the American wine market with top-quality natural and technical cork closures. Approximately 65 million corks are processed annually by the company, who sells them to wineries throughout North America.

“We chose Fairfield as our location because it is centrally located between two important wine regions—Napa and Sonoma counties and the Central Valley and the price was right,” says Armando Andrade, ACI Cork’s General Manager.

Fairfield Offers Important Business Benefits

There are many reasons Fairfield continues to appeal to manufacturing and commercial entities seeking to grow their businesses: an accessible Bay Area location, abundant space, value-priced real estate, a diverse workforce, and a unique set of regional amenities. For additional information on the city of Fairfield, visit http://www.Fairfield4Business.com.


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For Media Information, contact:
Miriam Schaffer
The Placemaking Group
510-835-7900 ext. 207
mschaffer@PlacemakingGroup.com