Hammons Products ready to go nuts

The way Brian Hammons tells it, "more nuts come from Greene County than anyplace else."

The black walnut harvest be-gins Oct. 1, and Hammons Pro-ducts Company is geared up for the occasion. Hammons is president of the Stockton-based company. He said his family's business has about 250 buying stations located in 16 states, but it buys the most black walnuts at its stations in Greene County, and the state of Missouri is the largest producer of the distinctively flavored nuts.

Hammons said Missouri will likely contribute 65 percent of this year's harvest, which he expects to be about 28 million pounds but could be anywhere from 25 million to 35 million pounds, depending on the wea-ther during harvest, which lasts about five weeks.

Black walnut trees produce a single crop each year, and the crop cycle varies.

Hammons said a recent trend is that every other year has had good crops, and even-numbered years' crops are smaller than normal. In 1999, Hammons said there was a record harvest of 49 million pounds. In 2000, the harvest brought only 9 million pounds.

Hammons Products does have about 240 acres of black walnut trees on its Sho-Neff tree farm northwest of Stockton, but Hammons said those trees are used primarily for research and demonstrations. About 99.9 percent of the black walnuts his company harvests grow in the wild and are brought by individuals to the buying stations.

"When people bring the nuts into the buying stations, there's a hulling ma-chine ... at each station. The nuts are put through that machine, and the hulled nuts are weighed, and the person is paid $10 per hundredweight," Hammons said. "A pickup load that has 800 pounds in it, after hulling, they'll get $80."

Once the outer hulls are removed, a hard outer shell remains. Black walnuts also have a lot of shell inside, Hammons said.

"Because the shell is so thick, and because when we buy the nuts, they have a lot of moisture on them, the yield of nutmeats to what we buy is only about 7 to 8 percent," Hammons said.

Tasty treat

For every 100 pounds of unshelled nuts bought, the company only gets about seven or eight pounds of nuts suitable for culinary use.

"It's an ingredient nut, so people use (black walnuts) in cakes and cookies, things like that. Not too much hand-to-mouth," he said.

A large portion of Hammons Products' nuts are sold to the ice cream industry they're used by Hiland Dairy, Braum's and Blue Bell but the nuts also are sold at Sam's Club and to other nut companies for their labels. For example, brands like Planter's, Kroger and Diamond sell black walnuts that they buy from Hammons' company.

"Those nut companies, their specialty is packaging and distributing. They're not necessarily a processor of nuts," he said. "Diamond processes English wal-nuts, but everything else they sell, they buy, including black walnuts from us."

Several restaurants use black walnuts now, Hammons said, but his company's looking at ways to increase the use of the nuts in restaurants. The company has several recipes and also sells the nuts on its Web site, www.black-walnuts.com. Hammons Products also participates in several food shows. "We're trying to develop markets and promote black walnuts and the flavor of black walnuts in Europe, so we're exhibiting at the Food Ingredients-Europe show in London in November," Hammons said.

In a nutshell

Hammons Products Co. doesn't limit its focus to black walnuts in terms of food, though. Part of the company's business is in the nutshells.

"We grind those up ... for abrasive cleaning and polishing (to) clean industrial parts," Hammons said, adding that the shells can be ground to various sizes for different uses. He said several years ago, when the Statue of Liberty was re-furbished, Hammons Products' shells were used in the blast-cleaning process. The shells also are used in oil-well drilling, and they have other applications as well. All told, shells account for about 30 percent of the company's business, Hammons said.

"We buy so much shell, we've got to do something with it," he said. Hammons said there also is a small amount of nutmeats in each 100 pounds that might not be ideal for cooking or dairy uses, and those nutmeats are used in cattle feed.

Family business

Hammons Products Company was founded by Brian Hammons' grandfather, Ralph Hammons, who in 1946 bought a cracking machine and began selling his "Missouri Dandy" black walnut nutmeats. Brian Hammons' father, Dwain, also is involved in the company, as is his grandmother, Faye Hammons, and Brian Hammons is the third-generation company president.

The company's plant in Stockton has about 100 employees who basically work year-round processing the annual black walnut crop. The plant has a visitors' center and a gift shop where Hammons Pantry products, such as candies, cookies and other confections, are sold. Hammons said a lot of machinery is used in the nut hulling, cracking and shelling processes, but it's the people who make the final inspections and make sure the nutmeats go to customers top-quality and shell-free. About 150,000 pounds per day are processed at the plant in Stockton.

"If we have 30 million pounds of nuts, it'll take us a year; 49 million pounds of nuts obviously lasts us more than a year, but that's OK, because we try to build up a whole lot in the fall and really get them out fast, and then ease into a good, efficient operation," Hammons said. The plant should begin shelling the new crop around Oct. 8.

Construction on a new building at the Stockton plant is nearing completion, and it will house production of an oil-field product made from the shells. Operations in the new building should begin in January.